Jane Kennedy: In the horrific case of John Paul Massey in my constituency, focusing on the breed disrupted and undermined the partnership that needs to work between a housing association and the police when the public report concerns the behaviour of dogs. Chipping dogs and encouraging owners to be trained in ownership, not focusing on the breed, is the way forward.

Brian Jenkins: I wish to follow the comments by the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) about the Staffordshire bull terrier. Anyone who owns a Staffordshire bull terrier knows what lovely, warm animals they are, but they were demonised in our national media through ignorance and a misunderstanding of what a dangerous dog is. The very title "dangerous dog" misleads the campaign to control the ownership-it is a privilege and not to be given out lightly-and control of a dog. What are we going to do to stop the people who own these dogs?

Richard Benyon: On Monday the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), said,
	"we are still interested, certainly from a Home Office perspective, in views on third-party insurance".-[ Official Report, 22 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 4.]
	Ministers know what the problems are with bull breeds in certain communities and they know about their effects on people living in those communities, so what do this Government do? They use a sledgehammer to miss a nut. They have had 13 years to get this issue right and now, in the run-up to an election, they produce measures, immediately withdraw them and then partially reintroduce them again. Do they actually talk to their Home Office colleagues? What confidence can we have that this Government will bring in measures that will deal with a serious and urgent problem?

Hilary Benn: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I say that I am pretty reluctant to take lectures on effective legislation from the party responsible for the original, 1991 Dangerous Dogs Act, which had to be amended in 1997. He should be slightly cautious on that subject. That is the first point.
	The second point- [ Interruption. ] I was not in the House at the time; I will take credit for what I have done. The second point is that third-party insurance could be useful in relation to particular dog owners. For example, it could be part of a dog control order. Third-party insurance was included in the consultation paper because some who have been party to the debate suggested it. The Dogs Trust, for example, is in favour of the proposal and thinks that it would be sensible to have compulsory third-party insurance. However, I am afraid to say that the Opposition decided to go around suggesting that the Government had already made up their mind to introduce compulsory third-party insurance for everybody. That is not our position, and that is why I made it clear that we do not intend to proceed with that proposal.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Progress is a little slow this morning. We do need to speed up.

Nick Herbert: But the Government's inability to produce a credible plan could result in infraction fines of up to £300 million. Their incompetence with the Rural Payments Agency has already resulted in fines of £75 million. Is it not a scandalous example of a waste of public money that they are raising taxes on the public to pay financial penalties to Brussels because of their failure to deliver?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his ability to criticise the RPA during a question on air quality. That is very imaginative, but there is no relation between the two. I have just said that we hope to be able to avoid the risk of infraction leading to fines. For particulate matter, the risk is now very small. On nitrogen dioxide, meeting the limit values is more challenging, but we have additional time to prepare our case to the Commission. And, as I said in my original answer, the Mayor of London is responsible for improving air quality here, along with the London boroughs. Following a review of a public consultation, a draft air quality strategy for London is expected shortly. As I mentioned, we hope to see it today.

Barry Sheerman: Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are to get people to understand the importance of local sourcing, we have to educate children and families? Does he share my concern about a Natural England survey showing that the likelihood of child visiting any green space has halved in a generation? Is it not about time that we opened up the countryside and showed children where food is grown?

Jim Fitzpatrick: My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We are indeed working hard with the DCSF and other organisations to promote school visits into the countryside so that children can learn where their food comes from and be encouraged to grow some food back in their own school premises. More and more schools are engaging in that. Under the eco-schools project, about 1,000 green flag schools are finding out where food comes from and are growing their own as part of a holistic approach to the environment. My hon. Friend makes a very good point; we will continue to work hard on that agenda.

Mr. Speaker: One answer will do. Minister.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Mr. Speaker, we need the best of British producers to be able to tender for and win the big public and private sector contracts both at home and abroad. We are doing what we can to help promote the sustainability criteria and the animal welfare criteria and we will do everything we can to encourage Government Departments to procure British products.

Martin Salter: This will be my last appearance at DEFRA questions. Members will be pleased to learn that I shall not be asking about fish, otters or cormorants. The session has, however, been enhanced by the notion of Sunday walk-by shootings in Bogotá. The Minister will be aware of the 10-year campaign that I have waged on behalf of my constituents on the Haddocks estate in Tilehurst for the adoption of their drains by the water companies, as recommended by the excellent Pitt review. Can the Minister assure them that he has managed to secure cross-party agreement for this very necessary measure, so that whoever wins the next election, my constituents can be assured that they will not face the horror of a hike in their bills as a result of the failure to adopt their drains many years ago?

Huw Irranca-Davies: I commend my hon. Friend on his campaign on behalf of people living on the Haddocks estate and elsewhere. I also commend others who have campaigned long and hard. I think-I am now looking across at the Opposition Front Bench-that we have a consensus on the transfer of private sewers from 2011. That will be good for my hon. Friend's constituents, and for tens of thousands of people throughout the country. It will be good for Norman and Sheila Jewell of Pencoed, Mike Edwards of Sarn, Brian Whitmore of Brynna and many others. It will save them from the horror of being faced with bills for, in some instances, tens of thousands of pounds when their private or lateral drains collapse.

Jim Fitzpatrick: I recognise the hon. Gentleman's concern about the industry in his constituency. Historically, however, cider producers pay lower rates of duty than other producers, and the rate that they will now pay is about half that paid on beer. The smallest UK cider producers will remain exempt from the duty increase-they are subject to a small cider makers' exemption which applies to makers who produce less than 7,000 litres a year-and we estimate that, as a result, nearly 400 UK cider makers will not be affected by any of the changes announced yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.

Dan Norris: Disposal of fallen stock by means of anaerobic digestion is not permitted under the EU Animal By-products Regulation 1774-2002. This is because of the animal and public health risk associated with such means of disposal.

Dan Norris: Rural economies are as diverse and, on average, as strong as their urban counterparts. All parts of Government are committed to supporting rural economies through mainstream departmental programmes. Those include £3.9 billion-worth of support to businesses and communities, from 2007-13, from the rural development programme for England, as well as maintaining rural post offices through a £150 million annual network grant and providing £2.6 million in European recovery programme support for rural community broadband.

Hilary Benn: We continue to work on effective means of diagnosis. The problem, as the hon. Lady will know, is that there is currently no reliable in-field test to identify it. On bovine TB, the House will, I am sure, want to know that the injectable badger vaccine has been approved by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate. That means that the six demonstration projects on which I have previously reported to the House can now go ahead in the summer.

Lynne Jones: Will the Secretary of State join me in applauding the trailblazing work of the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme, whose methods for ensuring that business waste is used as a valued resource are now attracting attention from all over the world-and, indeed, exports? Will he ensure that the Treasury continues to enjoy the benefits of that input to the economy by not cutting that programme?

Hilary Benn: I echo everything that my hon. Friend has said about NISP. It is groundbreaking stuff. Any Member who wants to see just how good it is should look at its latest annual report, which is stuffed full of examples. For instance, under that programme, people with materials that they no longer need are brought together with those who want to make use of them. This really important work shows us the potential to make much more resource efficient use of materials in the future. We will continue to support that.

Barry Sheerman: Would my right hon. Friend agree that it is important that DEFRA, when it is procuring advice and consultancy, should seriously consider the great work that is done by small charities such as Urban Mines, which I chair? Does he share my concern that the big commercial consultancies are often coming into that field, tendering and getting work for which they are much less well qualified?

Mr. Speaker: Jane Kennedy.

Jane Kennedy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is my swansong too, and I am grateful for your generosity. Has my hon. Friend seen early-day motion 1142? Does he accept that it ought to be a matter of concern to the Government that a decision at Warwick university, which I perfectly understand, is risking the applied science research base in agriculture and horticulture in the UK? It would be very helpful if Government Ministers could lead an impact assessment of that decision.

Nicholas Winterton: Agricultural and horticultural shows, like the one in Poynton in my constituency or the annual trials held by the Macclesfield and District Sheep Dog Trials Association, are getting increasingly costly. They are also getting more difficult to organise each year because of regulations, health and safety considerations, and so on. Is there anything that the Government can do to try and ensure that these wonderful countryside traditions can continue?

Desmond Swayne: I am indebted to your appetite, Mr. Speaker. The Secretary of State has already lost twice in the High Court to the Lymington River Association. Can we avoid another expensive spat? Will the Minister show Natural England the rough end of a pineapple to encourage it to take seriously the evidence that the association is giving it?

George Young: The House is grateful for the forthcoming business.
	Will the right hon. and learned Lady confirm the worrying rumour that this is her last business questions? Does she seriously believe that on Thursday 8 April the House will debate international development, important thought that subject is?
	Yesterday, why did the Chancellor fail to explain that he was freezing all personal allowances below the level of inflation, leading to a £2.2 billion stealth tax on 30 million people? When the measure was announced in the pre-Budget report, inflation was negative; now it is 3.7 per cent. That will take almost £50 out of the pockets of the lowest paid. Is that what the Government call "A Future Fair for All"?
	Next Tuesday, when a Treasury Minister winds up the last day of the Budget debate, will he take the opportunity to explain why the taxman is failing to pick up the telephone? Almost 45 million people failed to get through to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs last year-with many others stuck on hold. Does the right hon. and learned Lady think that that is acceptable?
	Once again, will the right hon. and learned Lady correct the record for the Prime Minister? Last week she turned down my offer of an opportunity to apologise for the Prime Minister's inaccurate use of figures on defence spending. Now he has failed to come to the House to explain why he said on 17 March that 300,000 businesses had been supported through the recession by HMRC's deferred payment scheme-despite the real figure being cited in a parliamentary answer as 160,000.
	Can we also have a statement on freedom of information requests? The Government have done everything in their power to prevent the publication of papers relating to the Prime Minister's decision to sell our gold reserves, as well as his disastrous raid on pensions. Yesterday, at Question Time, the Prime Minister said:
	"It is a matter for the Information Commissioner".-[ Official Report, 24 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 240.]
	But it is only a matter for the Information Commissioner because the Treasury has refused to make the papers available. If the Government are so relaxed, why do they not publish all that information today?
	Can I press the right hon. and learned Lady again on her plans to implement the Wright Committee's recommendations on strengthening the House, and to do so before Dissolution? I note she has tabled the Standing Orders, but they do not make it clear that topical debates score as one quarter of a day, as Wright recommended. Will she re-table the Standing Order with that amendment? Will she also sketch out the details of her plan B, which she shared with the House last week? If amendments are tabled to her Standing Orders, as they have been to the other Standing Orders, when will we debate them before Dissolution?
	Last week, the right hon. and learned Lady failed to assure to the House that all written questions would be answered before Dissolution. According to the parliamentary information service, more than 2,000 questions are still outstanding. Will she make sure that all Ministers respond properly by the end of the Session?
	Turning to next week's business, I note that when we agreed to adjourn next Tuesday after the Budget, we did not know that we would be debating the Lords amendments to the Personal Care at Home Bill after all the Budget votes. That Bill is an important piece of legislation, on which the Government suffered several humiliating defeats in the upper House. I note also that we will be sitting earlier that day, but would it not be better to delay the recess by one day and deal with the legislation properly on Wednesday? That would also give the House the opportunity to debate the Easter Adjournment, a debate that the right hon. and learned Lady has denied to Back Benchers, many of whom were hoping to use it as an opportunity for a valedictory speech. That extra day could also be used to debate the Standing Orders in respect of the Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, and of course we could have another round of Prime Minister's questions.
	Finally, given that this may be the last opportunity to reflect on the high points of this Parliament, does the right hon. and learned Lady recall her victorious deputy leadership campaign? Apparently, this was not as well received as it might have been. According to an eye-witness-one of his aides-when the Prime Minister discovered the result, "his face fell", but
	"he put his hands on my shoulders and said: 'It will be all right. We'll make it all right'."
	Has he made it all right?

Harriet Harman: I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work that the Select Committee that he leads has been doing on Sure Start children's centres and the emphasis that it has put-for a long period of time-on early years. Not only are there clear educational benefits from good early-years provision, which is what Sure Start children's centres provide, but they are absolutely what parents want. They want to see their children happy, safe and developing well in the children's centres. On the conclusion of the Budget debate on Tuesday 30 March, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families will be speaking, and there will be an opportunity for hon. Members to speak in that debate or to intervene on the Secretary of State.
	However, I would say this to my hon. Friend: whatever the Conservatives say about Sure Start children's centres-especially in the run-up to an election-I would not trust them as far as I could throw them on the question of protecting children. When they were in Government, they did nothing for child care. They have all the way moaned that it is about political correctness and that it is undermining the traditional wife-at-home scenario. They have never supported this agenda, but they have been caught out because it is what the public want. The Conservatives cannot be trusted on this.

Harriet Harman: We strongly support the Human Rights Act which we introduced and which gives legal rights to people in this country if their rights under the European convention on human rights-to which we have signed up- are breached, and it allows them to go to court. That is a reassurance that when this House decides that it needs to pass laws to ensure that people are protected from terrorism, those laws do not breach individuals' human rights. That is what the Act guarantees. We always consider legislation carefully, but we also have the failsafe of matching it against the Act. Indeed, on many occasions, laws that we have passed have been subject to scrutiny in the courts for compliance with the Act. In addition, Lord Carlile reviews terrorism laws on an ongoing basis. We have to respect people's rights, but also ensure that this country is safe.

Gerald Kaufman: Following my right hon. and learned Friend's positive response to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) about the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill, can she say whether she has received any approach from the shadow Leader of the House, whose garrulous ramblings failed significantly and deplorably even to refer to the Bill, to say that the Opposition-a member of whom blocked the Bill-will now co-operate in both Houses to make this desirable legislation law by the dissolution?

David Heath: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am extremely pleased to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, although that does not entirely excuse the activities of some Conservative Back Benchers. However, is it not the case that the matter is entirely academic anyway, because those Bills are private Members' Bills, for which no more time has been allocated by the Leader of the House? Unless Government time is allocated, those Bills cannot make progress in any case, whatever the official Opposition's position is. Is that not the case, Sir?

Sally Keeble: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is a mistake on the Order Paper, because although it says that there is an amendment, I understand that it was withdrawn this morning, so unless anybody raises any further objections or tables a further amendment to the legislation, I understand that it can go forward to the wash-up. However, that will require a bit of good will on both sides and a self-denying ordinance by Members; and, with your long track record on the issue in question, I am sure that you will be keen to see that happen.

George Osborne: I welcome this opportunity to begin the second full day of the Budget debate, because it gives us the opportunity to bring to the House's attention all the things that were in the Budget but not actually mentioned in the Chancellor's Budget speech. The debate will give us all a chance to reflect on what the rest of the country thought about the Budget-which is: not a lot-and the fact that only three Labour Back Benchers have turned up to support the Government's final Budget suggests that the parliamentary Labour party does not think much of it either.  [ Interruption. ] Or, indeed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He normally turns up, but there we go. He did not turn up for his "Today" programme interview either, so, after an empty Budget, we got an empty chair. Anyway, it is a pleasure to be debating these matters with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), because one thing is certainly clear. Depending on the result of the election, either she will be living in No. 11 Downing street or I will, so it is good for us to have this early debate.
	It normally takes 24 hours for people to see through these Labour Budgets, but this one disintegrated within about 24 minutes. Even before the Chancellor sat down, it was clear that he had completely failed to rise to the challenge of the times we face and the expectations of his high office. We know that the country faces a storm of economic problems. One in five young people cannot find work. Our recovery is one of the weakest in the G20, and our banking system cannot finance that recovery at the moment. Family incomes are being squeezed, and we have the largest budget deficit of any country in the developed world. Our credit rating is under threat, confidence is lacking, manufacturing is shrinking, exports are falling and business investment has collapsed. Everything cries out for urgent action, for energy, for vision, for leadership and for new ideas to get our economy moving.
	But what did we get yesterday from this exhausted, discredited Government? Absolutely nothing at all. An empty Budget. An exercise in politics, not an example of governing. The only ideas of any substance in this Budget are Conservative ideas. Taking first-time buyers out of stamp duty? Now, I knew I had heard that before, and when I did my research, it turned out that I had announced it at the Conservative party conference three years ago. It was roundly condemned by Labour Ministers at the time- [ Interruption. ] Well, we have the Treasury Minister here, and he told Parliament that the Government did not believe that our proposal on stamp duty
	"would be an effective use of public money". --[ Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 21 May 2009; c. 108.]
	Does he hold to that view, or has he changed his mind?

George Osborne: Look, we set out a proposal for a levy on non-domiciles that was also copied immediately after I had given that conference speech. We also set out plans for inheritance tax which were copied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time. As for the increase in stamp duty to 5 per cent., there are going to be lots of Labour tax rises that we are going to have to deal with if we become the Government. Our priority is going to be to avoid the tax rises on the many rather than the tax rises on the few. Our No. 1 priority will be to avoid the national insurance rise that the Labour Government have pencilled in for millions of hard-working people across this country.
	So that was one idea that the Government took from us. Then, yesterday, the Chancellor said that he was taxing the drinks that caused the binge drinking problems. That also struck a chord with me, because the Conservatives had announced that at our conference last autumn. It seemed, then, to have been adopted by the Government, but, when we look at the small print, we see that they have not exactly copied our idea. They have used it as a cloak for a huge duty rise on all cider drinkers, instead of just on the super-strength white ciders that are linked to problem drinking. That will hit the industry hard and it is something that we oppose.
	Then there were the 20,000 new student places. When my right hon. and learned Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills announced that proposal at the Conservative conference, it was attacked. The Minister responsible for universities said that it was elitist, and it was denounced by the Labour party. Now, of course, we are hearing about it in the Budget. But again, there is a catch. The Chancellor said yesterday that the Government would provide funds to
	"create 20,000 more university places...starting in September this year."-[ Official Report, 24 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 262.]
	We all thought, "Well, that's good of him to have found the money." Then we looked at the detail, and it turns out that only 10,000 full-time undergraduate degree places are being created, not 20,000. When we looked on the website of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills-this is not in any Treasury document-we found that the funding for those three-year courses is for one year only. So they are going to fund the students' first year, but not their second or third years. The funding for those years has to be found by the universities themselves.
	There were lots of other things that we proposed and the Government adopted, such as the green investment bank. We do not mind this pathetic Government, in their dying days, adopting our policies. But let me say this: we will never again listen to their lectures about how we do not have anything to offer the country, when the only things that they have to offer the country are the things that they have taken directly from us. Stealing Conservative policies is not going to hide the fact that the Labour party has nothing of its own to say to the British people any more.
	That is the extraordinary thing about this Budget. It is more interesting-if that is the right word-for what it does not say than for what it does, and that is what I want to focus on. What was not in the Budget, but should have been? Let us start with the things that were not in the Budget speech itself. How on earth did the Chancellor think he could get away with freezing the personal tax allowances of 30 million working people, and not mention it at that Dispatch Box yesterday? One would have thought that, having watched all those Budget speeches from his predecessor, the Prime Minister, in which the stealth taxes were not mentioned and the spending was double-counted, and having seen the damage that that did to the reputation of the Treasury, he would have learned the lesson. Apparently not. Did he really think that no one would turn to page 123 of the Red Book and see what he was doing? When the allowances were frozen last autumn, retail price inflation was negative. That was the excuse that the Chancellor used for freezing the allowances. Today, retail price inflation is 3.7 per cent., yet he is going to freeze the allowances from April. That is, in effect, a tax rise for 30 million working people, and it was not even mentioned in the Budget.

George Osborne: I also quite like "Labour isn't working", which applied then and applies now.
	Like some giant fiscal doughnut, yesterday's Budget had a gaping hole in the middle of it where there should have been a proper comprehensive spending review. If we look at table A1 in the Red Book-a table of Budget measures-there are great blank spaces where a spending review normally sits. The Government simply cannot tell us what they are planning to do in 2011-12, despite all the information and all the resources available to them. Is there anything more risible than the Government's explanations as to why they cannot provide the spending review? They tell us that it would impossible to do this in March because of the uncertain state of the economy, but we can apparently have it in October-yet this has nothing to do with the fact that there is going to be an election in May. They really are taking the public for complete fools.

George Osborne: My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right about that. It is an absolutely cynical manoeuvre.
	There is something that Government could do today. The document I have with me was leaked to us. These are the internal Treasury fiscal tables. They tell everyone-all taxpayers-about the departmental spending envelopes for the coming years; they tell what the Treasury expects to spend on debt interest, welfare bills and the like. This is the document that revealed that this Labour Government plan a 9 per cent. cut in Departments. It was leaked to us, as it happens, after the last Budget. This document could be published today in the interests of open information as we approach the election. I will ask the permanent secretary to publish it in the interest of good debate ahead of the election, so that we have at least some basic truths about what the Government's lack of a spending review means for Departments in future.
	Of course, yesterday the Government tried to put up a smokescreen around efficiency savings. Three hours after the Budget was delivered-this must be pretty unprecedented in that it happened after the Chancellor sat down-a series of written statements were produced from different Government Departments saying that they were going to deliver efficiencies. I have with me the one from the Department headed by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. We find that £550 million of efficiency savings are set out, expressed and explained in three sentences. It is a half-page press release with some notes to editors underneath. Ministers like the right hon. Lady went on television and said, "I have found my cuts." The most vocal exponent, in fact, was Children's Secretary, the right hon. Lady's husband, who said, "I have got £500 million worth of cuts that I have been told to find by the Chancellor. I have found £300 million, and I am working on the other £200 million."
	What Ministers do not say is that they have absolutely no idea of their budgets for 2011-12, on which these efficiency savings are supposed to be based. They can produce as many efficiency reports as they like, but-quite apart from the fact that the National Audit Office found that barely a quarter of the savings promised before the last general election can be traced today-that is not a credible way to approach the current problem.
	This is what was said by the officials who were contacted by the media last night. When telephoned by a journalist, an official at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said:
	"All quite deliberately vague. We haven't got any detail on where those savings will be gathered. We haven't got a breakdown of the detail: it doesn't exist."
	Another official said:
	"We certainly don't have a list as of today. It's a figure that we have agreed with Her Majesty's Treasury, as part of Building Britain's Future or whatever the slogan is that's on our press release."
	Another official was asked by a journalist about the £10 million corporate services reform programme. This was his reply:
	"Corporate services. Christ! Let me see if I can find out"
	what that is. So there we have it: the largest budget deficit in our peacetime history, and they are turning to God to help them to sort it out.
	One thing that the Government could do-I shall ask the right hon. Lady to confirm that they can do it-is publish the fiscal tables that we know exist. The Government claim that they want open and transparent debate about spending ahead of the election, so why do they not publish those tables? What are they trying to hide? If they published the tables, we could have a more serious debate about what the Government are actually planning to do. As I have said, that would help to focus people's attention on the central fact about the Budget: that the Government have not produced a credible plan to deal with the deficit.
	That is why, in the end, there has to be a change of Government. Our economy faces the most serious risks. For the first time in our country's history, we face a credit downgrade; for the first time in our country's history, we have a budget deficit that is larger than any other in the developed world. The challenge for a Government faced with those facts is to produce the plan that will put the economy back on track, and they have failed to do so.

Yvette Cooper: In fact, our debt as a proportion of GDP is still lower than those of many of our European competitors. Moreover, we have presented a serious set of proposals to bring borrowing down once the economy is growing and also, critically, to support the economy and support growth now.
	The Conservatives have got it wrong on the recession at every turn-wrong on Northern Rock, wrong on the banks, wrong on help for the economy, wrong on supporting the unemployed. As for their policy of cuts this year, that would send the recovery on to the rocks at just the time when it matters most. Conservative Members simply do not seem to understand the seriousness of the challenges we face, and the importance of helping those people who need our support in order to get into jobs and pursue a prosperous economic future.
	We have just come through the toughest world recession for many generations, and without Government action we would have seen millions of people lose their savings when the banks crashed, hundreds of thousands more people lose their jobs and struggle to find work, thousands more businesses go bust and thousands more people lose their homes. Yet despite the world recession being so much deeper than in the '80s and '90s, the level of business failures has been half that of the '90s, unemployment has been half that of the '80s and '90s, and the rate of repossessions has been half the rate it would have been if the '90s experience had been repeated. That is because of the action this Government took, but which the Conservatives opposed. Time and again they wanted to repeat their approach of the '80s and '90s, when the Government turned their back and shrugged their shoulders, and left people to face long-term unemployment, and business failure too.

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend is right; that is what is at stake here. This is what is at risk: a serious cut in spending could lead to a double-dip recession and the kind of stagnation that Japan experienced many years ago. My party is determined to avoid such problems.
	This is not just about the action to help the unemployed; it is about the support for businesses. It is about helping businesses to extend their time to pay; about cutting business rates for a year for small business; and about our increases in tax breaks for business-astonishingly, the Conservatives want to abolish those. So much for helping private business to invest and grow. The Conservatives actually want to penalise the businesses that are investing most. So much for helping to rebalance the economy. The Conservatives want to hit manufacturing and yet create another windfall for the banks by cutting the capital allowances for the banks.
	What we should be doing is following the proposals that the Government have set out by providing the support for the high-tech infrastructure of the future, including digital, high-speed rail and offshore wind, introducing the stamp duty cuts for first-time buyers funded from the most expensive homes, and keeping up public spending and public investment while the recovery strengthens. The Conservatives say that we cannot afford to do this-the truth is that we cannot afford not to do it. That is because the changes that we have made and the investment that we have already put in to help people back to work has already paid off: unemployment is already about 500,000 lower than was expected this time last year, and that has saved about £15 billion over the next five years. Getting the economy growing and getting unemployment falling saves money, saves livelihoods and saves people's futures.
	What did the hon. Member for Tatton want? He wanted the cuts that put at risk the recovery and that risk a double-dip recession. He wants to cut public spending, just as the Conservatives did in the '80s and '90s recessions, both during the recessions and in the early periods of recovery. That is why unemployment kept rising in the '80s and '90s for months and years after the recessions finished. We are talking about cuts that would cost us more for years to come.

David Gauke: Will the hon. Gentleman clarify one particular point? He has listed a number of cuts proposed by his party, which I think that they calculate as constituting £15 billion. Does he consider the cuts that he has listed to be savage cuts, or is it the additional cuts on top of that that he considers will be savage, to use his word?

Kelvin Hopkins: I entirely applaud what the hon. Gentleman has been saying the last few minutes. He seems to be suggesting that we should have more targeted public expenditure, particularly in the construction industry. I entirely agree with that.

Simon Hughes: That is what my hon. Friends and I have argued for months and for years. We have said for a long time that the present economy has been unsustainable. We have overstretched ourselves and been irresponsible as a nation. We have been irresponsible economically, by spending more that we could afford. People, and bankers in particular, have been gambling with the nation's finances. We have also been irresponsible environmentally, using the resources of tomorrow rather than investing the resources of today.
	To pull ourselves back, we need targeted investment that is set out clearly, managed appropriately and held to account democratically. Often, that investment should be led locally, with local government involved in delivering the Warm Homes scheme. The regions of England and the devolved Administrations must be encouraged to develop renewable energy, and the like. We support that, and the manifesto that the House and the public will see in the next few weeks will set out that targeted investment. Our plans for taxation will be at the centre of our proposals, flanked on either side by plans for reducing the deficit and plans for targeted investment.
	Unlike the Conservatives, we are clear about tax changes. We would make tax simpler, and give help to the many and not the few. Unlike them, we are clear now that we would make spending cuts, to give help to the many and not the few. We would reduce pay increases for the well-off to help the pay of the less well-off.
	The people of Britain are waiting for the election, and desperately want it to happen soon. I think that they realise that the main party options across the whole of the UK give them three choices. They can have more of the same if the Labour Government are re-elected, even though the past 13 years have been only a wasted opportunity that has given us our worst ever deficit. They have a promise from the Conservatives of a completely different economic approach, although nothing has been revealed yet. From the Liberal Democrats, they have a realistic, pragmatic and costed programme that would deal with the deficit. It would do so with the consent of the public, yet continue to sustain investment where it is needed.
	We need productivity and growth in this country, but that growth must be sustainable and long term. We need that for the builders, not the bankers. It must be onshore, not offshore, and in the interests of the many and not the few. My colleagues and I will be putting that case to the British public in the weeks ahead.

Kevin Barron: The speech that we just heard from the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) was quite brilliant, and I agreed with much of what he said. However, a lot of what he proposes in respect of public building has been done under this Government. For example, there has been a great deal of investment in council houses; those in my constituency are being fitted with double glazing to make them fit for the future.
	The hon. Gentleman did not explain what the leader of his party was talking about months ago when he said that savage cuts were needed in the economy. I do not think that he has changed his line, although I did not listen to everything that he had to say yesterday. I know that he is in opposition, and so has to say what his party would do in office, but the Government made clear yesterday their plans for the future. I hope that they will be able to carry them out after the election. Those plans represent a sensible approach to the problems that the recession has created.
	The recession has been international, but it has hit our economy. The Government's sensible approach is far better than the response mounted by the Conservative Governments of the day to the two recessions that we have experienced since I became a Member of this House in 1983. Those Governments did anything but try to ease the problems that existed in those periods: they did not seek to provide employment or look after the needs of the unemployed or anyone else.
	I listened to what the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday in response to the Budget. I know that that is a most difficult thing to do, but he said absolutely nothing about what a Conservative Government would do in response to the recession from which I hope we are emerging now. We must not dip back into recession, but the right hon. Gentleman said nothing whatsoever in that regard.
	I listened to the shadow Chancellor, both on Radio 4 this morning and at the start of the debate this afternoon, and he said nothing either. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions asked him what the Opposition mean when they talk about making cuts in the year 2010-11. All she got was absolute silence.
	At the moment, the budgets are in place for our public sector. There are plans for more new schools in my constituency, on top of the ones that we have just had. There are three in the village that I live in, but the major Opposition have said nothing at all in that regard. If they were to be sitting on this side of the Chamber in a few weeks, what would happen to the 2011 Budget? What would happen to the money for the Building Schools for the Future programme? That has not been mentioned yet in this debate.
	Would I get the new schools in my village? The primary school that I went to in the 1950s has been completely rebuilt. It was near to my home, which has been taken down, but we have a new primary school now and it has had the best report from Ofsted that it has ever had. It is a school that, in its building, environment and so on, is fit for education in the 21st century. It replaced one that was built in 1914 to educate people in what was then a mining community.
	The three schools that I am talking about are in the same village. The former comprehensive school-or community school, as it is called-is an academy school now and is going to be completely rebuilt. At the moment, it uses the old secondary modern school building that I went to in the 1950s, and the grammar school that was just next door. I think that both were built in the 1920s, and the buildings are not fit for education in the 21st century. I am not talking about the education provided by the schools, as all of them have improved in that regard. I believe that the buildings themselves are not fit for people to work in, never mind for people to sit in and get educated.
	The Opposition are silent about what they would do, saying only that they would bring in cuts in the year 2010-11. Public sector infrastructure replacement has changed my constituency and helped to change the education of young people there far beyond what I imagined could happen under any Government. The Opposition have made it clear that they would do things differently and look at public sector cuts in the next financial year, but I believe that that leaves them open to the charge that the changes seen in my area-and the same things can be seen in most of my communities-would be in danger.
	I listened to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and I listened to the Chancellor as well. I wholly support what they are doing on behalf of my constituents and the communities that I represent. They have been hammered by, and blamed for, recessions in the past. They have been made to pay for them far more severely than has been the case in the past two years.

Kevin Barron: That is precisely the case that I am making. I have grandchildren at the academy that I talked about. Just a quarter of a mile away, I have grandchildren in the infant school, which was built in the '30s. The infant and junior schools are coming down completely. They will merge and will have new school premises. There will be a new school for the academy, too. It is quite a large community or comprehensive school, in terms of numbers. There will be a new school for those with special needs on the same site, too. That is potentially under threat. The Opposition Front Benchers, who tell us every day that they will form the next Government, say nothing at all about those issues, which are on everybody's doorstep. If the issue affects my hon. Friend's constituency and mine, it must affect many of the constituencies of Opposition Members. We are not the only ones who should be asking what the Opposition would do in government; Opposition Members ought to do so, too.
	I listened to the Budget speech yesterday, and to the Leader of the Opposition's vacuous statement that followed it. That statement derided what the Government have been doing in the real world. I mentioned manufacturing, but perhaps I could give one more example before I go on to what I want to talk about. I should like to talk about the prime thing that the Government have done. I assume that it would not happen in future, if there was a change of government, but the Opposition cannot put the clock back on what we have done. I want to talk about coalfield regeneration.
	My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's constituency would have been quite similar to mine, 15 or 20 years ago. In my constituency, under the Conservative Government, we lost coal mining jobs-and related service jobs, too. It was often said that there were two or three such jobs lost for every coal mining job lost. I lost 4,000 coal mining jobs in a very short period. My local unemployment levels were twice the national average, even when the coal mines were open. They are nowhere near twice the national average now. There is now a much fairer share of employment and unemployment, in this country and this economy, than there was traditionally.
	Let me give a good example of what was done by a Government who did not care, and who drove the pit closure programme, even though we burn as much coal as we ever did. It just comes from abroad now, and not from our coal mines, although I have one coal mine left in my constituency. Dinnington colliery closed in 1991. The bulldozers went in and took it down, but nothing happened on that site until a Labour Government were elected. It took them a few years, too; they were working elsewhere. A Labour Government took £14 million on to that site. They cleaned it up and put some roads in it. They invited the private sector-they did not wheel in the public sector-to build things on that site and to create some jobs there.
	Today, the Dinnington colliery site boasts Formula 1 racing. This year, Manor Motorsport, as it was, joined up with Virgin Racing. That colliery site was brought to life by this Government. On the same site, Johnston Press built a £62 million digital printing press. It prints daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and everything else. If it had been left up to the Conservative Government, nothing would have happened on that site. There were no plans to do anything. There are now hundreds of jobs on that site, some very high-tech. It has a diverse economy, which is great. When a coal mine is closed, it hits the economy and the people very hard.
	All that work was done and encouraged by organisations funded by the Government, such as Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency. We are told that the Opposition will remove RDAs; they do not think that RDAs have a role to play in our economy. They ought to look at what has happened in the real world, beyond these green Benches, in communities such as mine, which were effectively left for dead generations ago.
	I want to pick up on what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said yesterday about us as a manufacturing nation. Everybody keeps knocking this country down as a manufacturing nation. It is not manufacturing as it used to-that is true. Manufacturing activity is lower now than it ever was, but this country is still the sixth biggest manufacturing country in the world. It has some great strengths in manufacturing. I know from my work in Parliament that pharmaceutical manufacturing has great strength, and it earns a lot of money for us.
	Let me tell hon. Members what has been happening on one of the old colliery sites in my constituency in the past 12 years. There is the advanced manufacturing park on the Waverley site. It is based where the old Orgreave coke and chemical works are, and where, before that, the Orgreave colliery site was. Obviously, the colliery was closed after the miners' strike. It had a symbolic role in that strike; many thousands of people were on strike there for 12 months, as people will be aware. It eventually closed, and as a consequence, it became an open-cast mine.
	At the initiative of the Government, through the regional development agency and the coal owners, now UK Coal, it has been changed dramatically into something that really shows the way forward. It was, as I say, a joint venture between public and private sector organisations, and its aim is to create an internationally recognised centre for engineering, innovation, research and manufacturing excellence. The advanced manufacturing park's goal is to capitalise on the advanced engineering and manufacturing expertise that has amassed in south Yorkshire, and further to strengthen that capability so that the area's companies can remain globally competitive in the 21st century. When I hear Members on the Opposition Benches deriding this Government and saying that they have done nothing, it makes me really angry. They should come and look at constituencies such as mine, which were left in a mess by the Conservative Government.
	The advanced manufacturing park is a hub, and it has some of the world's leading materials and structures research and development organisations. It enables manufacturers of all sizes from all sectors to take advantage of advanced technologies and new market opportunities so that they are better able to create local jobs and export the best of the region's manufacturing, design, technology skills and innovation throughout the world. It boasts a highly skilled and knowledgeable work force of more than 300, including more than 100 graduate engineers and PhDs, from countries such as the USA, China, Germany, Israel and Mexico.
	The wide range of high-quality property available at the park includes small offices, workshop and lab space, through medium-sized, hybrid and light industrial units, to larger custom-built design and build options. That provides growing companies at every stage of their development with the opportunity to locate their operations at the UK's recognised centre of excellence for advanced manufacturing, and to benefit from their proximity to industry innovators and international brands. It regularly demonstrates exactly how Yorkshire's advanced manufacturers have a world-class reputation for innovation and excellence.
	The site was visited recently by an organisation that supports UK and German companies that want to trade and invest overseas, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be more familiar with it than me. The Government's UK Trade and Investment organisation helps UK companies to win export business globally and overseas businesses seeking to invest in the UK. It markets this country's strengths as a world-class source of products, services and partnerships, and as a business location. The director of UKTI in Germany, Mr. Malcolm Scott, recently visited the advanced manufacturing park, which it is the only one of its kind, and is attracting millions of pounds of investment to south Yorkshire.
	According to UKTI, Britain is Europe's no. 1 destination for inward investment, and Yorkshire comes high on the list of preferred locations. Rotherham is one of only 16 places in the world, and the first in England, to be recognised as a world leader in welcoming inward investment. It holds the soft landing zone accolade, awarded by the USA's National Business Incubation Association, for its support for businesses to arrive, survive and succeed in the town. That is international recognition of our great sense.
	Mr. Scott, during his visit, saw for himself why the park has a global reputation for engineering, innovation, research and manufacturing excellence, and why it is attracting interest from around the world. Last year the Government announced that Rolls-Royce had chosen that site as the location for its new £25 million nuclear advanced manufacturing research centre. When that opens, it will sit alongside other world-leading materials and structures R and D organisations, including the university of Sheffield's advanced manufacturing and research centre, which is a joint venture with Boeing, the TWI technology centre and Castings Technology International.
	At that site, Boeing and the university of Sheffield are undertaking leading-edge projects on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. That is what is happening in the real world and in our economy. Mr. Scott also saw 17 high- tech companies, including Fripp Design and Research, a product design, research and business consultancy, and many others. The Boeing-university of Sheffield joint venture is a £100 million project that leads the world in that area of R and D.
	Without Government intervention, none of that would have happened. We would not have had Boeing in south Yorkshire-at the leading-edge of aerospace technology; and we would not have had Rolls-Royce coming in to build on that site a manufacturing plant that is estimated to be the size of four football pitches. That is the reality of what this Government have been doing in communities such as mine, which past Governments left to rot. When I listen to people talking on the radio or in this House, I deeply resent the fact that they do not have the decency to say that massive mistakes were made in the past in constituencies such as mine, and that this Government have been putting them right.
	We may have borrowed a lot more money in the past few years, but that may have some connection not only with what has happened on that site in my constituency, but with the new schools that it is getting. The issue is not just about bad debt; it is about the future. I accept entirely that the debt has to be managed, but this is about the future of our people, our communities and our children, and we ought to recognise what this Government have done.
	That 100-acre advanced manufacturing park is on the site of the old Orgreave works, and neighbouring local authorities have also given planning permission for a massive development of office space on the site. Alongside yesterday's Budget, the Chancellor also announced the publication of a report called, "Relocation: transforming where and how government works". He said that the Government were looking at finding savings by relocating civil servants from expensive London offices to elsewhere in the country, and that as a first step 15,000 posts would be relocated in the next five years. Planning permission for the offices on that site is now, I think, at the Government office for the region, or it may be on its way down to a Minister's desk, and that development fits ideally with a programme of relocating civil servants outside London.
	I read yesterday's report, whose author is Ian R. Smith. He commented on why every Government over many years have wanted to relocate civil servants to different parts of the country, and on some of the difficulties that there have been. However, he gave three reasons why civil servants should be located in London and elsewhere. First, Ministers need their ministerial back-up teams, and civil servants from their Departments obviously need to be in London, close to Ministers, this House and the other place, because that is how the system works.
	Secondly, Mr. Smith mentions other areas just outside central London, which is an expensive place, as he explains. They include the London gateway and Stratford, where more could be done, and where the Government are undertaking great regeneration work. Again, however, the Opposition do not seem to recognise that. Thirdly, he says that after that second scenario we ought to be more serious about relocating people to different parts of the UK, including Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the different regions.
	So, I am not going to miss this opportunity to plug the planning application to which I referred, and which has gone through the local authorities, because it would enable not just a set of civil servants to relocate to Yorkshire, but public sector bodies to cluster, share accommodation and facilities and provide shared services. The developers, Helical Governetz, say:
	"The 'hub' although perfect for government relocations will also be an excellent solution for the regional civil service seeking co-location and the wider public sector-particularly local government".
	They go on to mention the NHS and everything else.
	That site could deliver the government of the future, be that local government, regional government-although we are a long way from an elected regional chamber, and long may that remain-or central Government. They could be delivered out there, in that area, and that new form of government should be delivered throughout the United Kingdom; it should not be centrally based, as it currently is. I thought that I would include that plug. I do not expect that much will be said about this in the wind-ups. However, I hope that we will look to ensure that where there are sites with planning permission we can get engagement by Government, particularly Regional Ministers, to ensure that this process goes ahead.
	I am now going to sit down after what has been rather a long speech. I felt that given that we are very close to a general election that will decide who sits in Government, I ought to have my say on behalf of my constituents and many thousands of other people in constituencies such as mine that were laid to waste in the last two recessions; indeed, recessions were created to lay them to waste. It would be wrong of me not to get up and say to this House that when we go to the ballot box in a few weeks' time we should not forget the lessons of history, because some things look just the same to me.

Simon Hughes: The hon. Gentleman knows that he has a lot of respect in this House. He is right about the first priority of a Government. We are clear that in the defence review that we all know will happen after the next election, we must guarantee the funding to ensure that troops on the front line, whether they are from the Royal Navy, the Army, the Air Force or the Royal Marines, whom I was with last night, have what they need to do the job flexibly, responsibly and effectively. However, some things may not be affordable and, in our book, a like-for-like replacement for Trident is one of them.

Nicholas Winterton: I am only too delighted to agree with the hon. Gentleman. My love of the European Union-or lack of it-is extremely well known. Indeed, I tell the House that Europe needs us much more than we need it. There is a huge trade deficit with the countries of the EU. What is more-to add one more thing to build on what the hon. Gentleman said-before we joined the EU, we had a surplus of trade with the countries that then comprised the EU, and that has been totally reversed.
	The goods trade gap with non-EU countries was also wider according to the last range of figures-it increased from £3.4 billion in December to £4.8 billion-after exports to countries outside the EU dropped by 12.5 per cent. on the month and imports increased by some 1.6 per cent. What we are witnessing is the result of the fact that the UK's growth was increasingly driven by unsustainable factors such as exorbitant public spending, which if not reversed will seriously undermine our long-term potential for recovery.
	From 2000-01 to 2008-09, public expenditure increased from £364 billion to £617 billion. The current forecast from Her Majesty's Treasury-Ministers may wish to confirm this-is for £702 billion of spending by 2010-11. Government spending as a proportion of GDP has increased from 36.8 per cent. in 2000 to 43.2 per cent. today. That very substantial public sector pump-priming spend is both undesirable and, as one or two hon. Members have said, unsustainable. Given the recession in the private sector and continuing, accelerated public spending, Government spending is likely to be 48 per cent. of GDP by the end of this financial year. Does the Minister believe that that is sustainable? Government spending is back to levels last seen in the mid-1970s. It is estimated that pump-priming increased growth, albeit unsustainably, by 1 per cent. in the past decade.
	HM Treasury forecast a deficit of £175 billion for the current fiscal year-the current forecast is around £12 billion less than that-but that is almost twice as bad in percentage terms as the UK's deficit at the height of the International Monetary Fund crisis of the mid-1970s. There are effectively three ways of tackling that deficit, which were dealt with in a way by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) and the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey at the beginning of the debate.
	One way is to allow tax receipts to erode the deficit by stimulating GDP growth. That has been the Government's main approach, and it has resulted in a 0.4 per cent. increase in growth. The choice after that is therefore unpalatable: tax increases or spending cuts. If the UK is to rebuild long-term economic growth, there is no choice but to reduce significantly the excessive spending of the last decade, most of which was based on borrowed money.
	Raising taxes would be counter-productive. The UK's tax advantage over most of our EU competitors has already been lost, and further tax rises, as I am sure most hon. Members agree, will further erode the UK's competitive position. Spending cuts in the short term will impact on tax revenues and Government growth assumptions, and tax increases will crowd out the private sector. Again, it was interesting that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley agreed that the site of the Orgreave coal depot has been developed by private enterprise, albeit assisted by the Government. That is what we want to see in many more parts of the country.
	Throughout the 2000s, the Government's economy was an unsustainable engine for growth and we are now suffering the consequences. In my view, we need to build a new economic model based on saving, investment and exports, instead of the debt-fuelled model of the last decade. We simply cannot go on with the same irresponsible economic policies, which have been followed not only by the present Government but by Conservative Governments in the past. Those policies have recently given us the biggest boom and the biggest bust, and they now threaten our recovery with higher debts, higher instability, higher taxes, higher interest rates and-sadly-a possible increase in unemployment.
	As the right hon. Gentleman also said, we are one of the great leaders in the world in advanced manufacturing. We have some of the greatest companies in the world operating from the UK as global players with huge strengths in new technology and innovation. I refer especially to AstraZeneca in my constituency. At its peak, it employed 7,500 people in my constituency and that of the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton. The importance to the local economy of that one firm cannot easily be described.
	When will the Government ensure that they do not place additional burdens on business, such as the increase in national insurance, fuel tax and regulations? Our manufacturing strategy should be to support all companies, and especially our large companies, in encouraging innovation so that small and medium-sized companies can be the little acorns for the future. As we know, from small acorns large oak trees ultimately grow. If the future of this country is to be built on modern manufacturing strength, when will the Government encourage industry instead of disincentivising industry and manufacturing through increased regulation and taxation-including national insurance, which is another form of taxation that is a disincentive to employment?
	Why is the Ministry of Defence purchasing aircraft from the United States when an adapted Nimrod MRA4 could fulfil the role, saving several hundred excellent highly skilled jobs at BAE Systems in Woodford, which has been an important part of the UK aerospace industry? Only this week, the Secretary of State for Defence notified me that the Government have finally decided to buy the Rivet Joint, a Boeing aircraft that is 40 years old and has been lying in the desert for many years. Why buy that instead of the Nimrod which could provide jobs in Woodford for people in my constituency and others in south Manchester and north-east Cheshire?
	I give the Government credit for some of the assistance that they have given to the manufacturing sector through some additional investment allowances in the Budget. That is fully justified and one way in which industry, especially manufacturing industry, can be helped. Despite receiving unprecedented and valuable bail-outs from the taxpayer, the banks et al are providing little or no meaningful assistance to hard-pressed manufacturing via increased lending.
	The plight of small to medium-sized businesses is a serious one, given that the commercial banks are still-I have evidence of this in my own constituency-refusing to lend to struggling businesses, which are after all the powerhouses of the modern economy. As I have indicated, individual businesses in the Macclesfield constituency continue to find it difficult to secure the affordable credit that is so vital for their survival. So often, the difficulties that they are facing have not been of their creation. They did not, in the main, cause the credit and economic crisis that the world has experienced, and we do not want these businesses to go out of business.
	The problems faced in my constituency, however, are repeated throughout the north-west. There is still widespread concern about the difficulty of arranging bank loans, despite the assurances being given by the Government. There is evidently growing competition, too, from manufacturers abroad, which are also suffering from reduced orders and overcapacity, and are now therefore flooding the market in the UK with goods at less than cost price. That is affecting manufacturers in this country producing for both home trade and export. Given that about half of UK manufacturing output is exported, surely it is important that the world economy moves forward as well. It is very important to us that we work with the rest of the world. It is important that we co-operate-and that co-operation should extend beyond the European Union-so that we can achieve growth and jobs for the future. That will benefit not just the economy of this country, but, I believe, the economies of countries overseas.
	It came as bad news for the UK when its trade gap with the rest of the world widened unexpectedly in January to its largest since August 2008. Exports saw their sharpest drop in more than three years, according to the Office for National Statistics. The UK's trade gap in goods and services widened to £3.8 billion compared with £2.6 billion in December. I put this question to those on the Treasury Bench: when will the Chancellor recognise the value of our manufacturing industries to the stability and future success of the UK's economy? When will he reverse the crippling £16 billion in constantly changing regulations and £7 billion a year in new taxes introduced by this Government? And when will he recognise that manufacturing-I repeat this for the third time-is one of the only sources of sustainable, non-inflationary economic growth, and therefore the key to getting out of this damaging recession?
	With loose monetary policy and sterling, the manufacturing sector can-and, I hope and pray, will-return to positive, year-on-year growth by the later months of this year. As for the road to recovery for the wider economy, first, the huge budget deficit-I say this both to my own party and the Government-must be tackled. The next Government will, I think, continue to ignore this problem at their peril. The incoming Government must act immediately on the deficit and stabilise long-term interest rates. No areas of the Budget should be ring-fenced. Of course there will be priorities, but priority should, inevitably, be afforded to national infrastructure and defence, both of which are of long-term strategic importance to the nation.
	Sadly, no programme of responsible cuts, efficiency savings and restructuring can ignore social security and health care. I am sure that everyone here, including the right hon. Member for Rother Valley, who chairs the Health Committee, would agree that there is room for savings within the health service bureaucracy. I was personally opposed to having providers and purchasers in the health service. It was a very costly innovation, those many years ago, by the then Conservative Government, and I think that a lot of that money, which has been spent on management, could have gone on patient care and nursing.
	I declare an interest as an honorary vice-president of the Royal College of Midwives, like the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), who I hope will catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in a few minutes. I believe that we need to spend more money on what I call genuine patient care-not just treatment but care. Despite the fact that I have not been involved with the Health Committee for many years, I continue to take a considerable interest in health care in this country.
	As a country we urgently need to establish a medium-term plan to reduce the size of the state, which today accounts for-I say this to the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins)-almost half the UK economy. Let us not forget that progress will be dependent on growth, but no economy can successfully grow in the long term with such an over-dependence on central Government and the state. I can say with some confidence that my constituency will, I trust, play its part in that recovery.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker, it has been a huge honour to serve our country, my constituents in Macclesfield and this House for almost 39 years. This is my valedictory speech; I hope that it has been constructive. I have loved being in this place. I hope that the authority of Parliament can be restored, and that the authority and independence of Back Benchers can grow-

Kelvin Hopkins: Indeed, it would be difficult to do both at the same time. My hon. Friend is most helpful.
	People have now recognised that they would feel threatened by the Conservatives, rather than by ourselves, should they win the election. We have emphasised the importance of sustaining employment, and we have had some success in doing that, but we need to go much further and generate more employment. Generating employment is the solution not only for everyone's quality of life but also for the deficit. The serious cause of the deficit is that our unemployment is too high. If it were to go down and we were to return to full employment, we would get much more back in tax revenues and pay out much less in benefits.
	There was a quotation in  The Times this morning from Anatole Kaletsky, whom I am sure everyone reads. He said:
	"To respond to disappointingly low growth by raising taxes and slashing spending would be economically suicidal, setting Britain on the path to Greek-style debt deflation and almost certainly increasing the government deficit, as Mr. Darling quite rightly warned."
	He went on to quote the Leader of the Opposition's speech yesterday:
	"But Mr. Cameron declared: 'Every family knows that when your debts mount up you need to start paying them off or things only get worse.' For a man quite likely to be the First Lord of the Treasury in two months' time, this pre-Keynesian economic illiteracy was troubling".
	I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman will be the First Lord of the Treasury, but Anatole Kaletsky does. I also think that that prospect would be more than troubling to most ordinary people; it would be quite frightening. The Conservatives have made a big mistake, tactically and politically, as well as threatening to derail our economic recovery.
	Anatole Kaletsky also recognises-although I was there before him-that there has been a genuine shift in the Treasury's laissez-faire philosophy towards the more interventionist industry policy advocated by our noble Friend, Lord Mandelson. I very much welcome that change of direction, and I would like to push it much further. Indeed, in the past year, the General Motors plant in Luton, which produces the excellent Vauxhall Vivaro, has been given a secure future through the intervention of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. He has been very helpful in providing financial support to General Motors in Britain, and the plant now has a secure future.
	During that time, I have met the Secretary of State twice and put my case to him directly. I have also written to him at length on a number of occasions not only to emphasise the importance of preserving excellent manufacturing plant such as the General Motors plant in Luton but to say that manufacturing matters much more than our Government have recognised, unfortunately, until recently. I have told him that we need to rebuild manufacturing, and he has been saying all the right things about that in recent months. I like to think-perhaps I flatter myself-that some of our conversations and correspondence have helped to tip him in that direction. He is concerned about the degree of foreign ownership, for example, and about the balance of trade, and I think that he right to be so.
	Germany has almost religiously defended its manufacturing sector, and it has kept hold of its balance of trade surplus for several decades, much to its advantage. I think that we should follow Germany's example. It is also interesting to note that, when the European Union starts to threaten Germany's strength, it suddenly turns out not to be quite so pro-EU as we thought it was. Indeed, Angela Merkel has suggested this week that if member states cannot hack the rules of the eurozone, they should be expelled from it. Is this the beginning of the end for the eurozone?, I wonder
	Perhaps we could get back to much more sensible economic arrangements in which countries manage their own economies and choose their own fiscal and monetary policies and their own exchange rates according to their needs. That would be a much more sensible way of proceeding, rather than ramming together weak and strong economies and hoping that the weak ones will suddenly take on the strength of the strong ones. That does not happen. The best example, of course, is Argentina, which signed up to a fixed rate with respect to the dollar and for 10 years wrecked its economy as the middle classes took all their money out, leaving a wrecked economy behind. Eventually, the country recreated its national currency, separated from the dollar, massively devalued and has spent a long time trying to rebuild the damage done by that stupid mistake. I think the euro has the same problem.
	That is almost an aside, but we were sensible to keep outside the euro. I have many times asked Conservative Members to congratulate the Prime Minister on his very sensible decision to keep us out, which has been advantageous. I am sure that they appreciate it, although they will not give him as much fulsome praise as I do-not publicly, anyway.
	Clearly, there is a deficit, but focusing on the deficit now is not what we should be doing. We should be focusing on economic growth, as that is what will bring down the deficit. The deficit has two components. The first is cyclical. If we have rapid economic growth, unemployment comes down and that cyclical problem disappears. A structural deficit perhaps remains, if we accept this analysis. In the longer term, when the economy is stronger, we can address that structural deficit. It might mean cutting public spending for some people, but for me it means raising taxes, income or revenues to close the gap.
	How do we cut the substantial tax gap? Estimates from a group led by the Public and Commercial Services Union, the Tax Justice Network, War on Want and others suggest that there is tax gap-the gap between what the Treasury should receive and what it actually receives-of £120 billion a year, which is a staggering amount of money. The TUC estimates suggest that tax avoidance costs us £25 billion a year, while tax evasion costs us £70 billion a year. The debts owed to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which does not have the resources to collect them, amount to £28 billion.
	I attended a meeting in the Palace of Westminster about two weeks ago in which PCS members working in HMRC said that if they had more officers, they could collect more tax. Some 12 years ago, I paid a visit to my local VAT inspectorate office. I must say that I was very impressed as it was doing a good job, but there were not enough people employed there to do the job properly. I was told that every new tax inspector collected five times their own salary in taxes. It seemed to me that it would be logical to have more tax inspectors to collect a lot more tax. When I wrote to the Treasury at that time, I received a fatuous reply, saying that it was trying to reduce costs by cutting staff, but doing that means reducing income by far more than the cost of the staff.
	I urge my Front-Bench colleagues even now to think seriously about employing more tax inspectors, perhaps paying them a bit better and raising their morale so that they do a good job and collect more of that £120 billion that we are not collecting at the moment. Even if we collected only a quarter or a fifth of that amount, all our problems would almost disappear overnight and we would have more to spend on the things that I think we should be spending on-free long-term care, much higher state pensions, more investment in transport infrastructure and so forth. We still have serious problems with public transport. London is one of the poorest of the major cities in the world when it comes to public transport, as revealed quite recently when measured internationally.
	There is a lot more we could do with this amount of money. Most of this uncollected money is owned by relatively rich people and companies, but they do not spend much of it. Those who have studied economics at a modest level will remember the propensity to consume. Poor people, pensioners and families tend to spend all their money, so it goes straight back into the economy as soon as they get it, which generates demand. Rich people-even Members of Parliament-may not. Very rich people put it in the Cayman Islands or even Belize. When they put it in other places, it does not help our economy. These people have a low propensity to consume. The more we give to the less well-off, the more we generate for the economy.

Michael Fallon: I am grateful for that clarification, because we were perhaps under the illusion that the Liberal approach was savagery, but not yet; we now find that the savagery is going to start in 2010-11. We cannot sit on our hands for a whole 12 months. Many of these economies and savings will not jeopardise the recovery and hurl the country back into recession.
	How does all this need to be done? As the Governor of the Bank of England has been saying time and time again, there needs to be a credible plan that will capture the confidence of the markets, and that needs to be spelt out. Secondly, the bulk of the savings have to come in the first Parliament. Spreading these reductions over six, eight or nine years is too leisurely. The bulk of the deficit has to be tackled in the first Parliament.
	Thirdly, the bulk of this deficit reduction surely has to come-this is where I obviously disagree with the hon. Member for Luton, North-from spending reductions, rather than yet more tax increases. Tax increases are already in the pipeline. There are to be tax increases on national insurance contributions, which will affect anybody earning more than £20,000 a year and all the businesses that employ them. Employers' contributions are going up from next April-that is in the pipeline. In addition, we have now discovered, from the small print of the Budget, that everyone is going to pay more in income tax straight away, this April, because of the failure to index the allowances, so the bulk of the reduction has to come from the spending side rather than the tax side.
	Fourthly, the process has to be open and honest and must have public consensus behind it. I agree with the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) on that point. That is why it cannot be done through the chaotic press releases from various Whitehall Departments that my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) read out this morning-the continuous sleight of hand over various spurious efficiencies. It has to be done openly and honestly. That is why I welcome my hon. Friend's proposal for an office of budget responsibility. There is nothing new about such an office, as a similar office signally improved and helped the Government of Canada to make the reductions that they had to make because there was an independent juror who could properly vet the Government's proposals and help them to judge whether those proposals were fairly balanced.
	As well as restoring public finances, the Budget should have been used to fire up the economy. We have to recapture the missing 5 or 6 per cent. of our gross domestic product that was lost during the financial crisis. As in any Budget there are some measures that I welcome-there are measures to help businesses, even small businesses-but I note that an awful lot of the measures seem to set up organisations to be run by Lord Mandelson, including various investment banks and panels. I think that we must first reduce the cost of employment. Businesses in my constituency, particularly small businesses, are now tax credit administrators. They have to look at student finance and check people's immigration status, so they are virtually working for the Government. There is a perverse incentive on small businesses almost to do everything possible not to take on an extra body. We have to look at the cost of employment. That means looking again at the increase that is threatened on everyone from April 2011. If my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench are right in proposing to exempt all new businesses from national insurance payments for the first 10 employees whom they take on, why should not that also be right for all small businesses? Of course, we need to reduce those costs.
	We must also do more to help exporters. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield, I am seriously concerned about the deterioration of our export position. The Government could do more on that, as public finances allow. They should consider withholding tax, as it is difficult for companies that do not have large trading operations in this country to have profits to offset against the profits they earn overseas. We ought to consider the balance, in relation to withholding tax, to see how we can better help exporters.
	Finally, we need to do more about early-years funding. The private equity industry in this country, with which I am connected, has been much maligned, but has performed a very good service in helping medium-sized businesses, such as family businesses, to proceed to the next level. What we have not been so good at is providing start-up, or risk, capital. That is done so much better in the United States. I think that we need to look again, as public finances allow, at the eligibility and thresholds of venture capital trusts, which are a minor part of business incentives and simply do not encourage the kind of investing and risk-taking culture that new businesses need if they are to start up and get the capital backing that they need.
	Those issues are not opposites. It is essential both to rebuild public finances and to re-energise our economy if we are to rebuild the confidence that we need among businesses and in the markets, but the Budget will not do that. Hon. Members might remember sitting mock exams in March, when they were at school, in preparation for the real thing in the summer. Yesterday's Budget was a mock Budget, and the Government failed it. In the end, I suspect that whoever wins the coming election will have to introduce a real Budget later in the summer.

Harry Cohen: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon), whose case is always coherent, even if I do not agree with his solutions. I do not agree with his assessment of yesterday's Budget, either. I think that it was a steady-as-you-go Budget designed not to choke off the recovery. I saw that the front-page headline of the  Daily Mail today called this a Budget of envy and spite-I do not know what world those people live in! I think that it was a result of the extra 1 per cent. of stamp duty on the sale of homes with a value of more than £1 million, which just shows the agenda of the chief journalists and political editors of papers such as the  Daily Mail. We know where they are coming from and people should not be taken in by their hyperbole.
	The Budget was designed not to choke off the recovery, but the Tory alternative of heavy cuts would do just that and be grossly unfair. It was not public service workers, ordinary working men and women or even the middle class who brought about the crisis and the near economic collapse; it was the reckless bankers and speculators and those like the Tories who wanted virtually no regulation or control of the banks at all. However, those without the blame are being asked to pick up the bill, and it is a heavy one. The heavy cuts that the Tories are looking to impose on them are unfair.
	I still think that we need substantial banking reform. It must never happen again-that must be the watchword -and the structural change is not in place. Let me quote President Obama in a speech on 21 January this year:
	"For while the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it is still operating under the same rules that led to its near-collapse...These are rules that allowed firms to act contrary to the interests of customers, to conceal their exposure to debt through complex financial dealings, to benefit from taxpayer-insured deposits, while making speculative investments; and to take on risks so vast that they pose threats to the entire system."
	He went on to say:
	"Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail."
	We should be saying the same for the UK taxpayer, too.
	On the "too big to fail" argument, President Obama said that he had made it the policy in the United States that there would be no further consolidation of the financial system. I think that that should be our Government's policy too, and, in addition, we should require the break-up, division or sell-off of any financial institution that, if it failed, could inflict major damage on our economy. No bank, hedge fund or any other financial institution should be in a position where it has to be protected by a taxpayers' bail-out, probably involving a huge amount of money, because if it fails-probably by its own recklessness-it wrecks the economy. That position of blackmail has to end.
	That brings me on to the situation with hedge funds. If they fail, they risk the interests of taxpayers, too. In his speech, President Obama referred to the hedge funds and said:
	"If financial firms want to trade for profit, that's something they're free to do. Indeed, doing so responsibly is a good thing for the markets and the economy. But these firms should not be allowed to run these hedge funds and private equities funds while running a bank backed by the American people."
	He emphasised that again when he said:
	"Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds or proprietary trading operations for their own profit unrelated to serving their customers."
	That is the key point. We should adopt that as a policy and ensure that none of our banks is allowed to run hedge funds.
	Hedge funds are completely private. There should be no public finance support or tax subsidy for them whatsoever. They can have their deals with the banks, but their owners should have no special ownership privileges, based on the fact that they are too big to fail. If the banks decided to take over Manchester United FC or Liverpool FC because the hedge funds could not meet their debt, then that is what they should do. My early-day motion 1185 of 23 March 2009 spells out that position.
	The Chancellor has been wrong to elevate the hedge funds to a privileged position in our economy. In a number of speeches, he has called them "systematically important" but, as I have said, the hedge funds are private and generally unregulated and should not have such status. Basically, hedge funds are the corner shops of the banking and finance industries in this country. Corner shops are important, but we would not dream of saying that they were systematically important to the economy. The Chancellor has got it wrong.
	I do not agree that the hedge funds should be considered systematically important, and we are out of step with the US in that regard. We are also out of step with the European Commission, which issued a draft directive on alternative investment fund managers in response to the revelation that the alternative investment finance sector managed some £1,900 billion in assets at the end of 2008. The directive is aimed at trying to regulate those hedge funds, but it was blocked by the UK Government. I am disappointed about that.
	Angela Merkel has been quoted as telling the Bundestag:
	"I work well with Gordon Brown, but his one-off tax on bankers' bonuses is only half as good an idea as the hedge fund rules we are considering and which Great Britain ought to approve. That is what we must fight for and I am expecting some support."
	I agree with Angela Merkel on that. Another report stated:
	"The key issue holding up a compromise deal was disagreement over the conditions on which funds and fund managers based outside the EU-including London-based managers running offshore funds-should be allowed to market to professional investors within the 27-country bloc."
	Clearly, our Government are trying to protect offshore hedge fund interests, and I do not think that they should. It was right in yesterday's Budget to apply those agreements to Dominica, Grenada, Belize and all the other offshore places, but we need Europe-wide regulation rather than individual agreements. We need to get back in line with Europe on that.
	The Government argue that action should be taken through the G20, but that is a weak argument. The G20 should be involved in regulating the hedge funds, but we should establish that regulation with the strength of EU agreement. It feels as though the Government's position is one of delay, deferral and procrastination, in order to defend the hedge fund sector. I do not agree with that.
	In mentioning the importance of accountability and transparency for investment funds, I have the opportunity to refer to a Bill that I had proposed to bring to the House; I will not have a chance to do so, because I am standing down at the election. Let me read it into the record, because it is an example of where we should be going on the issue of greater transparency. I call it the investment funds, endowment and pensions funds transparency Bill. It says that
	"every Company, Business or Authority responsible for an investment, endowment or pension fund shall publish annually, and have available for any investor or beneficiary of that fund who requests to see it, a full list of investments in that fund over the last year of the Annual Report period, together with a list of changed investments over that year with an explanation of why each was changed. Any investment transferred to, or from, a fund in which any Director, manager or major shareholder in the business has a stake must be separately listed and the Director, manager or major shareholder's interest specifically explained."
	That would stop directors, managers and major shareholders ripping off investors in those funds. That is the sort of transparency that we should provide. I am sad that I will not get to introduce that Bill, but I am pleased that I have been able to refer to it and put it on the record.
	My second point on transparency is about non-executive directors on boards of banks. I raised the issue of transparency and accountability at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, and the Chancellor mentioned that we would look at getting other people on the boards of banks to uphold the public interest. However, the Government have backed away from that. I am sad about that, because if those organisations are systematically important, as the Chancellor says, there should be a person directly on the boards of banks and hedge funds with a mandate to represent the public interest, keep control and whistleblow when dangerous speculation is going on. I hope that a future Government will come back to that idea. I have concentrated on those measures because they are a lot to have left out of the Budget, but they are still vital if we are to run a coherent economy.
	The deficit is the pre-eminent issue, and will be in the election, too, so the issue clearly must be addressed. I am proud of my role in tackling the deficit. I was the first in the parliamentary Labour party to call on the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to adopt a Keynesian policy. They listened and did so, and it has saved thousands of jobs. We would be in much greater deficit, and in a much greater crisis, if the Government had not followed that policy, and I pay tribute to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister for doing what they did. Of course, the deficit has to be tackled, but over a period, reasonably, and without putting the economy and recovery at risk.
	Here are some of my suggestions. First, we must recover every single penny handed out to the banks, plus interest. I was pleased that the Chancellor included that point in his speech; I pay tribute to him for that. We have not heard the same commitment from the Tory party. I suspect that that is because the Tories want to sell off the state interest in the banks-other financial institutions as well, but banks in particular-as soon as the profits start to flow again. That money would not come back; the taxpayer would be sold short.

John Randall: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), who made what I guess was a valedictory speech, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton). The House will miss them.
	I am not quite ready for the concept of the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead as one of Parliament's saviours through advising the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, along with President Obama, the Chancellor of Germany and others. However, I am prepared to see him as Robin Hood.
	First, I declare my interest as a director of the family retail store in which I am also a shareholder. The details are in the Register of Members' Financial Interests. Normally, I try not to speak in the Budget debate because I know that interests outside this place always attract the attention of the media and Labour Members. However, having been involved in retail since 1979 and even before that, I must speak now because I want to tell the House what it is like out there on the high street.
	We have had history lessons from various hon. Members. I shall be brief, but I want to say that my business has existed since 1888. Even in my time, the cycle-the way things come around-is one of the things one learns. Budgets always used to come at Easter time, as they still do, and I remember as a child sitting in a car on a windswept sea front, often in Wales, on our Easter holiday, with my father listening to the Budget on the car radio. My father was a wonderful man, but I knew that after any Budget, particularly a Labour Budget, it would be wise not to go near him for about 12 hours -possibly 24 hours after a Labour Budget-because Governments never seem to understand businesses. They talk about them, but they never really understand.
	We have been talking about history-the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead gave a vignette from a past era. I can remember hearing about the selective employment tax and asking my father what it was. He explained it to me. Younger Members may not realise that the Labour Government imposed a tax which meant that every business was taxed on the number of people it employed. We all understand today that that was not an incentive for job creation. I still believe that Governments, particularly Labour Governments, do not understand what is going on.
	Other hon. Members referred to the balance of payments and the fact that it does not seem to be mentioned in the media nowadays. We seem to have gone past all that, perhaps because of globalisation.
	The Budget will disappoint people in business. Business, not Government, creates jobs. Government can try to devise schemes-as has been said, many schemes involve creating jobs for people who like to be on schemes, not real jobs in real businesses. I am thinking of people I know very well-my employees. Some of them have been with us for many years, and we have members of same family working for us. They are hard-working, loyal people, but they cannot necessarily get the benefits of those on low incomes. They are not well off and measures in the Budget, such as freezing allowances and the provision on national insurance, will make them worse off. They are struggling to keep their families going and enjoy a reasonable quality of life. There are masses of such people around the country, and they are forgotten. Those hard-working people are just above the thresholds for help from the Government or from various schemes. I want to speak about them because I have every sympathy for them, and I wish that economic conditions were better so that I could pay them what they deserve. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead talks about socialism. When I started examining the business, I learned socialism is a great idea which simply does not work in practice. In a previous recession, we decided that we would take a pay cut. Every member of staff and I took a percentage cut. However, that was not actually fair, because someone who worked flipping hard and had a family to bring up took exactly the same cut as someone who might well be described-frankly-as a passenger. That is why I decided that that model does not work. I wish it would, but humanity is not designed for socialism.

William Bain: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall). Like me, he came to the House as a result of a by-election. I believe that his was towards the beginning of a Parliament, while mine was towards the end of this Parliament.
	This is my first Budget debate and I wish to pay tribute to those right hon. and hon. Members for whom this will be their last Budget debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who will speak later and the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), who made an exceptional speech. He had an alternative economic policy and a strategy for jobs and manufacturing-indeed everything that was missing from the speech by the shadow Chancellor. To coin a phrase used by the Leader of the Opposition, the shadow Chancellor today was an analogue shadow Chancellor for a digital debate.
	I also wish to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (John McFall), who spoke in the debate yesterday. It was a pleasure to listen to his valedictory speech. His work as a Minister and as a two-term Chair of the Treasury Committee has made a huge difference on issues such the regulation of credit and the banking sector and, on this side of the House, we will miss his contributions greatly.
	This is a good Budget for Glasgow, Scotland and the UK. It prepares us for the new jobs upon which our future economic prosperity will depend; it sets the country on a path of fiscal consolidation that will not be damaging to growth, employment or our social fabric; it protects vital investment in the front-line public services on which we rely; and in its fiscal measures it reflects a greater sense of fairness.
	A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to read a book by the Nobel prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, entitled "Freefall". The book argues that economic growth in both the United States and Europe remains anaemic, and given forecasts for private sector growth, and in the absence of continued Government support, there is the risk of continued stagnation. He emphasises that growth is too weak in the private sector to return unemployment to normal levels soon.
	When Professor Stiglitz visited London recently, he said that this debate was really about the economics of Keynesianism against the economics of Hooverism, and there is further support for his arguments in the recent OECD economic outlook report published on 27 February. It states:
	"In the major advanced G-20 economies there will be a need for continued policy stimulus until private demand gathers sustainable momentum, as the recovery will remain sluggish and fragile".
	It continues:
	"Fiscal policies need to remain supportive of economic activity in the near term, and the fiscal stimulus planned for 2010 should be implemented fully. The fiscal impulse should start to be withdrawn in 2011."
	It concludes:
	"Unwinding stimulus too early could jeopardise progress in securing economic recovery".
	I agree strongly with that approach.
	Let us look at what has been done in the 18 months since things went badly wrong for the economy in 2008: the Centre for Economic and Business Research has stated that quantitative easing has added about 2 to 3 per cent. to gross domestic product; the automatic stabilisers that have been introduced have given, and will give, a fiscal boost of 4 per cent. in the next tax year; and it is estimated that the fiscal stimulus in the 2008 pre-Budget report prevented GDP from falling by 0.5 per cent. in 2008-09. Furthermore, today, at its lunch-time seminar, the Institute for Fiscal Studies downgraded the structural deficit and said that it is now £67 billion rather than £73 billion. I support the Government's efforts to get the deficit down to 5.9 per cent. of GDP by 2014-15. Doing it that way is right and does not sacrifice jobs. Let us also consider the record of all the G7 nations: the UK has the most ambitious deficit reduction strategy. It is more ambitious than that of Germany, Canada, the United States, Japan, France and Italy.
	One of the key reasons why I stood for office was to tackle unemployment, and I am pleased that in the UK, at 7.8 per cent, unemployment is 2 per cent. lower than in the eurozone and 2 per cent. lower than in the United States. However, my constituency has suffered from an increase in unemployment in the past 12 months-it has risen by 901-so the measures on extending the jobs guarantee for 18 to 24-year-olds until 2012 are particularly important. Two weeks ago, I met about 20 young people in the Royal Strathclyde Blindcraft Industries factory in Springburn in my constituency. They had all come off the unemployment register thanks to future jobs fund investment, they were all learning a new set of skills in manufacturing and construction, and they had all had their lives turned around. They will be a great asset to Glasgow's economic future.
	Tomorrow I am hosting a jobs summit in my constituency, bringing together businesses, trade unions, CBI Scotland, the local chamber of commerce and public sector employers, as well as voluntary and third sector employers, because the challenge that we face in diversifying our economy is one that neither the private sector nor the Government can face alone. Rather, this must happen through the public and private sectors working together. That is why the role of the new green investment bank in driving future growth and employment in environmentally sustainable industries, with a £2 billion investment, is so crucial. I know that in Scotland, with offshore wind and investment in the digital and creative industries, the scheme will create thousands of new jobs. The Government therefore have a role in recalibrating our economy; they cannot simply stand aside and set a fiscal framework. A decent society needs an active, but not an overpowering state.
	If we maintain the current course, I hope that the UK will be able to match the levels of investment in research and development that countries such as South Korea, Germany and Sweden reached in previous decades; because it is through high-level manufacturing, the creative industries and low-carbon technology that we can permanently replace some of the output that was lost in the recession. My right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Scotland recently visited the Allied Vehicles plant in my constituency, which is involved in manufacturing zero-carbon vehicles powered by electricity. I welcome the fact that the Budget increases capital allowances for forward-looking companies such as Allied Vehicles, which employs 350 people in an area of economic deprivation in Glasgow, North-East.
	I also welcome yesterday's publication of a document by the Treasury on progressing towards the 2020 target of abolishing child poverty, which puts the role of work and making work pay at centre stage. There are 500,000 children in this country who are out of poverty because of the policies followed by this Government, while around 9,500 families in my constituency benefit from child tax credit. The increase of £4 a week in child tax credit for families with a one or two-year-old child will help around 65,000 families in Scotland. Across the UK in 2007 and 2008, there were 700,000 children in low-income families where only one adult was in work, while 43 per cent. of children were in families described as "working poor". There is therefore much to be done, through increasing employment opportunities of the kind that will help families with child care responsibilities and ensuring that people are demonstrably better off in employment than on benefits. A rising minimum wage over the next five years would greatly assist in that too.
	This is a Budget that I hope will have the support of my colleagues on the Labour Benches on Tuesday, and I hope that all of us will argue for the support of the country for it in the coming months.

Bill Wiggin: I was delighted to listen to the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), who opposed the duty on cider. That is exceptionally important, because cider has been a success story and has a tremendous history of growth in recent years.
	Herefordshire is the country's cider-making heartland. The United Kingdom produces around 130 million gallons of cider of year, and half of that comes from Herefordshire. One billion pints of cider are sold every year. There are tremendous environmental benefits to cider production: 2 million new apple trees have been planted since the mid-1990s, with 9,500 acres of cider orchards in Herefordshire. Forty-five per cent. of the apples grown in this country are used for making cider. There are more than 1,000 people directly employed in cider making and 5,000 indirectly employed. There is a wider value to the rural economy.

Bill Wiggin: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I congratulate him on the excellent speech that he made earlier. He is right to point out the benefits of orcharding, as it is called, and to say that the habitats that can be created in cider orchards are enormously environmentally helpful, positive and creative. Some wonderful and very rare animals and, particularly, beetles can only be found living on apple trees. And where would we be without mistletoe at Christmas time? Most of that comes from Herefordshire and Worcestershire. It is not possible to grow orchards quickly; they take years to mature. They can also take a variety of forms, including bush orchards and standard orchards. I hope that this savage increase in duty-10 per cent. above inflation, making a total of 13 per cent., which represents a disproportionate attack on the industry-will not have the undesirable effect that my hon. Friend has mentioned.
	I want to talk about the fragility of the cider market. Hon. Members will remember the golden days of cider being triggered by the Magners television campaign, which encouraged people to add ice to cider. That resulted in a tremendous lift across all the different brands, but the industry is still fragile, as is its growth. Many of the new producers are hobbyists, or small producers who are expanding, and they need to be supported, not forced to bear the brunt of the Government's tax plans.
	It is a great shame that the Government have chosen to penalise this industry. Duty on cider has increased by 20 per cent. in the past two years, and it is now being increased by a further 10 per cent. over and above inflation, making a total of 13 per cent.. The lower increase in duty on beer will always adversely affect cider sales, as there is a substitution effect. That is not the case, however, when it comes to making cider.
	People think that the way in which cider is made involves taking the apples and crushing them to press the juice out, then fermenting the juice, preferably in oak barrels, until it is fully fermented. It is then aged, bottled and sold. The process is very different, however, for the own-label white cider sold in supermarkets. The alcohol is created from sugar-type syrups, and the alcoholic liquor is then mixed with apple juice, apple flavouring or apple concentrate. It can then be sold as cider. It is that highly alcoholic, low-cost drink that is causing some of the antisocial behaviour problems that bother us all, and it is a great shame that it carries the name "cider". The fruit juice content is the key difference between the two.
	I hope that whoever forms the next Government will stop attacking people who make cider out of apple juice in the traditional way, and focus instead on the problem drinks. My local policeman told me that he had seen young people in supermarkets turning bottles round to read the label, to ensure that they were getting the most units for their money. For them, it was not about what it tasted like; it was about what it did to them. That is not the sort of cider that I am talking about, and it is not the sort of cider that Herefordshire makes. The white cider known as Frosty Jack's is not produced there.
	The Government should focus their attention on dealing with the antisocial behaviour issues and stopping young people-and, perhaps, older people-drinking white cider and getting into a terrible state.

Bill Wiggin: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I was encouraged by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton when he said exactly what the hon. Gentleman would have wanted to hear-namely that this across-the-board attack on the cider industry is not supported on this side of the House. My next-door parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Keetch), also speaks strongly for the cider industry, so it is a shame that he is not in his place today. He will be leaving the House at the next election, so I hope he will use this particularly vicious attack on our constituents as an opportunity to speak in this debate before next Tuesday.
	I would like to talk about something that happened last week. The Minister for Housing, the right hon. Member for Wentworth (John Healey), who I believe is the Government's pubs Minister, announced on 18 March 12 action points designed to support struggling pubs. Only a few days later, however, we see his Government attacking the key product that pubs are supposed to sell. It defies belief. We are losing five pubs a day. These duties will have an impact on the sale of cider.
	I received an e-mail this morning from a publican in my constituency who runs the Crown Inn at Woolhope, which prides itself on being one of the homes of Herefordshire cider and perry, stocking 18 types of cider all produced within 15 miles. This is locally produced cider being sold in a local pub to local people. That is the sort of model of sustainability that supports rural economies. It is something that the Government say should be encouraged, yet as soon as they get the opportunity, they torpedo all those good intentions with this savage increase in duty. That puts at risk the cider producers and apple growers, as well as the cider industry's strong and worthy efforts to improve not only environmental sustainability and local pubs, but higher standards of responsible drinking.
	At the start of his statement yesterday, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:
	"At the heart of our decisions is a belief that Government should not stand aside, but should help people and business to achieve their ambitions."
	What hollow words! This Budget and the cider duty increases do not correspond with those comments. The Chancellor also explained why this was being done:
	"A long-standing anomaly has meant that cider has been under-taxed in comparison with other alcoholic drinks."-[ Official Report, 24 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 249-256.]
	This, unhappily, ignores the far higher costs involved in producing cider and the considerable environmental benefits generated by the cider industry. It is a tragedy that the Chancellor has gone down this route.
	There is another message here, too, for those in the beer industry. I hope that the House will remember that large numbers of hop growers also live in my constituency and do a tremendous job at a time when there is a great deal of pressure from the brewers to use less and less hops and to choose hops with higher alpha acids. The industry-whether it be brewers or cider makers-decided to fight among themselves about duty and as soon as the Government saw division, they nipped into the gap and increased the duty not just, aggressively, on cider, but on beer, which is a great shame.
	Let me touch on binge drinking, too, as the high-strength, low-fruit-content ciders are deeply associated with this problem. The overwhelming majority of ciders are not beverages used by binge drinkers and the country's unique, traditional and responsible cider makers should not be punished for this behaviour. I think that if these cider makers lived in Labour marginal seats, the difference in the Budget might have been considerable. I hope that the Government will reconsider. I hope that, in the years to come, they will realise that attacking a British industry run by British producers for British consumers in British pubs is a very silly and sad mistake to have made.
	Let me touch an another aspect of the Budget that I noticed-the proposal for a green bank to deal with green issues. At a time when bankers are, let us face it, not popular, it is extraordinary that the Government are acquiring yet another bank. They have bought RBS and Lloyds, they have taken on a nationalised Northern Rock, and now they want another bank. I believe that Post Bank, which was promoted yesterday, will be the Government's fourth. I am very happy to see green businesses supported-I am a passionate environmentalist myself-but I do not understand why the Government want to own more and more banking businesses.
	If the Government really wanted to promote environmental issues, they could start by cutting red tape and ensuring that industries that are exceptionally environmentally friendly, such as cider making, are protected. They could deal with the microgeneration certification scheme, which is affecting green energy suppliers. They could also help farmers to produce more on-farm renewable and low-carbon energy. There are 2,500 on-farm anaerobic digesters in Germany, and only about 30 in England.
	One of my constituents tells me that he wants an anaerobic digester on his dairy farm and has invested in one, but he needs help from Advantage West Midlands. It wants to help, but it is bogged down in red tape. Regulations and red tape from DEFRA cost about £530 million, and prevent farmers from expanding into the low-carbon energy sector. After a decade of Labour, barely 2 per cent. of the energy used in the United Kingdom comes from renewable sources. That is a record that the Government will leave behind. They should be supporting jobs and the rural economy by making it easier for businesses to invest.
	Labour's claims to support green technologies are inconsistent. The rate of duty on liquefied petroleum gas, a fuel that the Government should be encouraging more people to use because it is cleaner, has spiralled upwards in recent years. In 2005, it stood at 9p per kilogramme. It has already trebled to 28p, and will rise further to 30.53p on 1 April, to 31.95p in October and to 33.04p on 1 January next year. Over six years it will have risen by 367 per cent. That is really not the best way in which to promote clean alternatives. The Government are sending a mixed message on green jobs: in March last year the Prime Minister promised to create 400,000 of them, but by the time of the Labour party conference the figure had fallen to 250,000.
	The real problem for businesses is the ability to borrow. The Government have increased the target for the amounts that banks should be lending to business, but the lending is not happening. During the current economic downturn 27,000 businesses have gone under, and lending is a problem for businesses in my constituency. Last year I arranged a meeting between banks and businesses, at which it was made clear that there was a problem. The banks themselves say that they would like to lend-especially to farming businesses, because the collateral in the land value is good-but they cannot take the risk unless a business has a long track record. The reason, they say, is that other banks will not lend the money to them. Liquidity is a real problem at present, and the Government will not solve it merely by creating new banks.
	Broadband is another example of rural communities being badly left behind. Towns and villages in my constituency that are not connected are suffering. Only 58 per cent. of households in the rural west midlands have fixed broadband connections. According to the Commission for Rural Communities, 42 per cent. of rural England can currently only access speeds of 2 megabits per second or below. I have written to Ministers, whose answers show that the Government have no idea of the percentage of business and residential properties in Herefordshire without access to the 2 megabits per second envisaged in Digital Britain. I met representatives of BT the other day to discuss the issue, and they were keen to help, but BT is a business too. It has shareholders, and faces challenges of its own. I am extremely worried that the Government's policy will not work.
	Lingen currently has no broadband provider. A company called QiComm used to provide it, but can no longer do so because the service is not commercially viable. Members of the community joined forces to get a service up and running themselves, with the support of the local council. There are 36 users, whose broadband service will be operational from 1 April. That demonstrates what can be done when users get together. However, if they are to pay tax on their phone bills, they will be paying for something that they used not to have but went out and acquired for themselves. I do not think that the Government's 50p tax on fixed-line telephones will deliver the changes that we would all like to see.
	The Government have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on bailing out the banks. Businesses will want to know why that hard-earned taxpayers' money is not filtering through the system and reaching them. We heard plenty about the car industry in the Budget statement, but I have not forgotten what happened in the west midlands before the last general election. The Longbridge plant was failing, and vast quantities of taxpayers' money were poured in. That was before the Phoenix four story broke. I therefore have grave reservations about what the Government have promised in the Budget. I am particularly sad about what they are going to do to the cider industry-a fantastic industry that was doing so well, and which has been dealt nothing short of a body blow by this attack on it by the Labour Government.
	There are now clear dividing lines. The Government have demonstrated that they have no regard for the rural communities. The best description of the Budget that I have heard is that it is a Polo mint Budget: it looks all right around the edges, but there is the gaping hole in the middle of £19 billion in tax that needs to be raised. We heard nothing about that. It was a Budget designed for an election campaign, which, like the Budget, will fail.

William Cash: My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) modestly said that when he came here he was not a very nice person, but I do not agree with that at all. He has always been a very nice person and, more importantly, he has enormous integrity. I want to get that straight, because when he goes into this election, he can hold his head high for the simple reason that, from the Back Benches, he has been absolutely true to what he believes in. As I have said several times in the past month or so, we not only need radical reform in this Parliament but we need our Back Benchers to have backbone. That has been part of the problem.
	Many of the complaints that have been made about the manner in which the system works, through the Whips and so on, do not take sufficient regard of the way that some of us have acted from time to time, for a variety of reasons, despite our general agreement with the policies, principles and attitudes of our parties. That applies across the House and in all parties, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) for standing out as a man of integrity. This is what makes a Parliament. We should not just get up and parrot whatever other people want to give us, by way of a broadsheet. We must get up and say what we really think, because our first duty is to our country, our second duty is to our constituents and our third duty is to our party's policies and programmes. Those sentiments are not mine but Winston Churchill's, and I believe them absolutely. I will do my best to continue in that manner after the next election if my electorate are good enough to return me to the House.
	I want to talk about the truth in relation to two main matters, the first of which is the economy. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury is a sort of neighbour of mine, as he represents Dudley, South-at least, he is not far away-and I have had many exchanges with him, as well as with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister, about what lies at the root of the Budget. Debt is what lies at the root of the Budget, and that will continue after the election whichever party gets into power. In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), I made a point that I have made several times in private meetings about the extent of the debt. I have pursued this issue since a debate on fiscal stability on 7 October 2008, when I began to compare the figures of the Office for National Statistics with the assertions that the Government were making about the true level of debt. I do not need to go through all the debates there have been on this, because I can say what I need to say very briefly.
	The national debt, as asserted by the Government, even to date, is set to double to £1.5 trillion by 2014-15. That is £23,000 for every person in the country during the decade of weakest economic growth since the second world war, and the worst decade for the stock market since the early 1930s. That is the asserted level of debt, but the actual level of debt is truly alarming-I would call it frightening. Yesterday, I received a letter from the ONS confirming the actual amount of net debt against the background of what has been asserted. That letter is in the Library, so anyone can check it. It says that the actual net debt is more than £2.65 trillion, if we include all the hidden costs such as public sector pension liabilities, and is not the £1 trillion figure that the Government have, in my opinion, misleadingly presented. What that means for public expenditure and taxation is relevant because there is a balancing act between how much we will need to cut public expenditure and how much taxation is liable to go up. We will only be able to tell the British people the truth. If I might quote Winston Churchill yet again, he said to tell the British people the truth. If we tell the British people the truth, they will follow our lead, but I do not believe that that has been done and the consequences will be very serious for whichever party wins the next general election. I firmly believe that my party will do so, but these figures will not go away.
	The Fiscal Responsibility Bill, which I described as a Bill for fiscal irresponsibility, will do absolutely nothing about those figures. I believe that that Bill has been enacted now, and it is an attempt to reduce the deficit by half within the next four or five years. I am afraid that that will not deal with the level of real debt. When one speaks to the credit agencies and the people in the bond market, as I have, and asks what criteria decide what our rating will be in the international financial markets, they do not say that they are considering the accounting principles set by the Government. By the way, it is not just the Government-I have discovered today that these figures, according to the ONS, are agreed in conjunction with EUROSTAT. In other words, these are European statistical formulas that have been adopted. I shall come on to that in a moment, because the bottom line is that the real figures are being fudged, not only here and in Greece but in every other country in Europe, if things such as public sector liabilities are not included.
	The credit agencies and the bond market are not interested in the conjuring of accountants; they are interested in the bottom line. They will tell anyone that the real bottom line is the actual amount of debt, and Network Rail, the private finance initiative, nuclear decommissioning or public sector pensions cannot simply be magicked away. So when I speak about £3.1 trillion, which is a huge figure, with its consequences for public expenditure and the amount of money that people will have to be taxed, we have to be realistic; otherwise, we would not be telling the British people the truth.
	Other problems arise from the speech that I heard from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Already the issue of youth unemployment is a big problem that the Government have not done enough to resolve. Unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds now runs at 19.6 per cent., and we heard only the other day about the problems regarding further education and the lack of confidence among those who know most about that matter. We heard during the debate on access to higher education that the problems for further education are recognised in that sector.
	Unemployment among people at large-I am now referring to the International Labour Organisation's definition of unemployment-in October to December 2009 stood at about 2.5 million. That is 7.8 per cent. of all those who are economically active in this country. To that I would add the claimant count for jobseeker's allowance-that is, 1.635 million. In total, therefore, the unemployment figure that we should really be looking at is 4.1 million. We cannot ignore the reality of the figures, which are in the House of Commons Library research paper "Economic Indicators, March 2010". Employment among 16 to 24-year olds has fallen by 7.8 per cent., which is more than for any other age group, so young people are being badly served by this Government. Another factor is that the number of public sector workers has increased by 200,000 in the last two years.
	As I am sure that people know, when they think about it, there is not one penny of public expenditure that does not come from the-hopefully reasonable-tax paid on income from private enterprise. That is the sole source of money for public expenditure. We all want reasonable public services: I am not against that at all, but the figures that I have set out are unchallengeable facts. They come from the ONS and the House of Commons research department. I am certain that the Minister will not attempt to challenge them from the Dispatch Box, but the picture that they paint is tragic.
	The Budget does nothing to resolve the problems that the Government face. The problems are so deep that they will not be resolved by the policies produced yesterday. It is tragic, but the Government have failed and that is why, above all else, we have to get rid of them.
	However, it is impossible to disengage the Government's failure from other difficulties. We know that the truth has not been told on debt, where the problems accumulated as a result of massive, irresponsible and extravagant public expenditure by the previous Chancellor, who is now the Prime Minister, when times looked good. He and his Government now face ruin for the mistakes that they made, but the difficulties go beyond what has been going on in the UK.
	We had a debate on the Lisbon agenda in European Committee B only a few days ago. The hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) was also there, as was the Economic Secretary. I have attended many similar debates since that agenda was devised in 2000. Because of the European Communities Act 1972 and the slavish manner in which we fall in with most of the policies emerging from Europe, it is impossible to disentangle our policy making here from what goes on in Europe.
	I think that the hon. Member for Luton, North will recognise that many of the problems also stem from the Maastricht treaty. He and I were the only two people in the House when section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993 was debated. We referred to article 2 and the aspirations embedded in the European treaties to produce high employment and prosperity for the people of Europe. It has all come to nothing: it is a total failure, and it has led to the rise of the far right and high unemployment. We are not immune, because we are seeing that even in this country.
	Why have the British Airways people been on strike, and why are we seeing the beginnings of similar action in the railway industry as well? Those events are just indications of how the failure of the economy, connected with what is going on in Europe, is producing the tensions and uncertainty that are already undermining the people of this country.

Tobias Ellwood: It is a pleasure to contribute towards the end of this important debate about the Budget. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who made an important point about the Government needing to wake up. This is an interesting Budget, but we needed to wake up during the statement itself, because the Chancellor's performance was so lacklustre. My hon. Friend also paid tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker), who began his speech by saying that he was not a nice person. I shall not comment on that, because he is a thoroughly delightful person now and a credit to his constituents, who I hope will see the light and ensure that he is back here in his place on the other side of the election.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) made an important contribution about apples and the taxation now hitting cider. I visited his constituency and saw how important that industry is. I represent Bournemouth in the county of Dorset and I know that, likewise, the industry is important there. I am sorry that the Treasury deem it appropriate to introduce taxation or changes to legislation without discussing them or properly thinking them through with other Departments, and that is a theme to which I shall return. I am sure that if the Treasury had engaged with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, it would be aware of how wrong it is to tax all ciders, rather than those that contribute to binge drinking.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) made one of the most succinct points of the entire debate. If the Economic Secretary to the Treasury is listening I shall repeat what my hon. Friend said, because he pointed to the Minister and asked, if an election had not been coming up in the next two weeks, would we have seen this particular Budget?  [ Interruption. ] I shall repeat what my hon. Friend said, because the Minister is still talking. My hon. Friend asked, if the election had not been coming up in two weeks' time, would we have seen this particular Budget? The honest answer is absolutely not.
	It has been interesting to experience this Budget debate far more closely than I have any other. The start of this ritual that we go through is a bit of a farce, partly because the Opposition and, indeed, the nation are denied the details until the debate gets going. That is a strange position to be in, considering that we, as Her Majesty's Opposition, are here to challenge and scrutinise what is going on. We then have to play catch-up during the debate in order to work out what the Chancellor is saying.
	Because of the Chancellor and the absence of substance, spark and detail, the Budget statement was a painful experience, as I have said. I think that Members from all parts struggled to stay awake. It was certainly painful for me, because, with the Chamber being crowded, I had to sit on the steps of the Gangway, so I ended up getting sore buttocks halfway through. However, that is a separate, personal issue on which I shall not dwell.
	This ritual borders on the ridiculous when we are denied access to the full report, and when the Leader of the Opposition has to react to what is leaked to the papers in the lead-up to the Budget statement and what the Chancellor has literally just said. Those are hardly the conditions for open and fair debate about the state of the nation's finances. It is like being given a jigsaw with some of the pieces missing and the picture on the box having been removed.

Tobias Ellwood: The hon. Gentleman makes a further point, suggesting, as we go through this year of more openness and scrutiny, that the Leader of the House might wish to pay further attention to the Budget as part of that process.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) has made a similar point. Twenty-four hours later, we are armed with the necessary information to be able to digest exactly what has happened in this Budget statement in a way that we were unable to do during the hour of the speech itself. Having been able to take stock and read the small print, we can make a full assessment of this Budget. Considering the state of the nation's finances and the urgency of getting public spending under control and assisting businesses that are still not getting support from the banks, there was very little to write home about. As the headline in the  Financial Times, which is pretty much a neutral newspaper, put it: "Darling ducks deficit challenge".
	This Budget has really been more about election tactics-the survival of Labour rather than what is good for Britain. I can imagine the discussions that took place in the last couple of weeks, in the lead-up to this, with people saying, "How do we manage this exercise for the benefit of our party in surviving through the next election?" I am guessing that it came down to three principal tactics. First, with borrowing at £11 billion less than predicted, how can that be spun in a way to suggest that there is a successful story and fine stewardship in navigating the troubled waters of the recession? Of course, that tactic has to be employed without mentioning the fact that we were the first country in the G8 to enter recession and last country to come out of it. It must also be spun in such a way that we are borrowing £163 billion, of which it costs £43 billion a year simply to do the borrowing. From an international credit rating perspective, that borrowing continues to be under threat.
	The second tactic that I think was adopted was the idea of stealing some headline-grabbing measures from the Tories and taking credit for them in order to close off potential lines of attack during the election. That is why we saw the abolition of stamp duty for homes under £250,000, the inheritance tax threshold frozen, and more university places offered. Of course, that tactic works only when one does not mention that it was a Tory proposal to abolish stamp duty in that way, that it was the Conservatives who decided to raise the inheritance tax threshold to over £1 million, and that it was the Tories who put forward the idea of more university places. What has also now been exposed, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton, is that the university places funding scheme is available only for one year, yet the average university course takes up to three years.
	The third tactic that I think has been employed is to rally the Labour party with eye-catching headlines on measures such as tax information-sharing with that good old country, Belize. Well, of course that got a big laugh-the biggest laugh of the day-but the enormous build-up to the big hoo-hah when this announcement was made suggests that the Budget is not being taken too seriously. Why not get to the core of the issue by doing what the Conservatives have been proposing-capping the level of contributions made to party funding? That is something that the Government could have done in any one of the 13 years in which they have been in power. Instead, they decided to go for gimmicky headline-grabbing measures.
	The same applies to the amount of money for repairing potholes-£100 million. Anyone who was listening to the "Today" programme this morning would be aware that repairing the roads to the necessary standards that we expect would cost £9 billion, so £100 million will not go very far, and it will probably cause arguments as to how and where it is spent, with possibly more going to Labour seats than Tory ones.

Tobias Ellwood: My hon. Friend and neighbour makes an absolutely valid point. That is the trouble with this Government. They see these schemes, they get put in place, and then, as we approach the election, things are moved around for electoral gain.
	The tactics of yesterday were all about attempts to overshadow key aspects of the Budget. We heard nothing about allowances being frozen, despite inflation running at 3 per cent., which effectively introduces another form of stealth tax. We heard nothing about the fact that national insurance is on its way up-not necessarily the best thing to do when one is trying to find support for businesses up and down the country.
	Of course, there was no mention of delaying the spending review, which is so critical from now until October. I ask the Economic Secretary: what is the difference between conducting the next three-year spending round now and doing it in October, apart from the fact that there happens to be a general election in May?
	A £24-billion-hole remains in the Budget, which is supposed to be filled from savings in public services. The Government have identified and even ring-fenced the money, but they have not said where it will come from. I am afraid that that will be an election issue. People will ask where Labour intends to make the cuts. Of course, we will not know until after the election, if at all. There are no details in the Budget, which is a "Don't rock the boat" Budget. It is the bluffers' Budget, which leaves the economy and the country guessing Labour's true intentions.
	As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne said, we often come into the Chamber and experience exchanges of pleasantries or otherwise; we chew over the issues and say things to each other. Yet the opinion that actually matters as much as anyone's is that of the investors, who examine the Budget speech and the details of the Red Book and decide whether to invest and support the Government. Hon. Members should consider the gilt markets and what happened during the Budget speech yesterday. Investors around the world started to sell Government bonds, pulling their money out of the UK. They did not like what they saw. The Economic Secretary shakes his head, but they did not like it.

William Cash: I am fascinated because I did not know that what my hon. Friend described had happened. Does he agree that it happened because investors know the true bottom line on debt and they are not taken in by the accounting rules, which are governed by EUROSTAT and so on? Investors look at the bottom line, which is much worse that the Government admit.

Tobias Ellwood: Again, my hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The Government must listen because people deciding to shift their money outside the country is likely to threaten our credit rating. The Government need to raise £158 billion of bonds annually in the next five years. That is a tall order with such a shadow hanging over our credit rating. I do not think that it can be achieved without better leadership and drastic action by the Government. Such action seems currently to elude them.
	In the few minutes that I have left, I want to consider an aspect of the economy that is close to my heart as Front-Bench spokesman on the subject-tourism and its contribution to the economy. It may seem an odd subject on which to focus, but it is the fifth largest sector in the economy. It is worth £114 billion and I understand that approximately a quarter of those in employment are somehow connected-directly or indirectly-with tourism. We do not do it justice or discuss sufficiently its contribution to the economy. The British tourism industry comprises 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses. It deserves our support, recognition and help. It is therefore not such an unusual sector to consider in a debate about the economy.
	What exactly is tourism? It links our seaside towns to our city centres, our country clubs to our town squares, the Lake district to the theatre district, the Ferris wheel to the roulette wheel and the museums in Kensington to the Munros in Scotland. The unique offering of all those things makes Britain exceptional. One cannot replicate that in other countries and that is why we are the sixth most attractive place in the world to visit. That accolade is not trumpeted enough.
	Tourism is also about supporting the small and medium-sized business. It is about the tax break on the furnished holiday let, the cost of the visa to enter this country, the price of air passenger duty and the scale of the red tape that faces the B and B. What can tourism do for the country? It has low barriers of entry-it is easy to get into tourism. There are favourable exchange rates, and a Deloitte & Touche report, which was produced not long ago, proved that for every pound VisitBritain spends abroad, it brings in around £25 to this country. That is not a bad investment. How many Departments can one give money to and then make more money from?
	Iceland is not a place that one might think of as a tourist destination-it is certainly not a place where one would want to invest one's money anymore-but as a result of what has happened to its finances, it is turning to tourism to mend its economy. It is trying to bring foreign exchange in by promoting and marketing itself in a way that it has not done before, and there are lessons for us to learn from that.
	It may shock you to learn that the House last debated tourism legislation in 1969, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and it is high time that such legislation was debated again. The tourism deficit is the difference between the amount of money that we spend abroad and the money that is brought here by overseas visitors. In 1997, the deficit was £4 billion, but that has escalated to £18 billion today. We are losing out: not enough money or people are coming to this country from abroad and we are not attracting people from this country to stay and holiday here. We need to address that so that we can keep that money in this country.
	The Department for Culture, Media and Sport budget actually increased by 60 per cent. in the past 10 years, but the tourism budget remained stagnant at £35 million. In fact, in the recent spending round by 20 per cent. What a shame, given that it is one of the few Government operations that can actually make money, as I said.
	Let us look at the Budget and how it ties in with tourism. As I mentioned earlier, national insurance has not helped at all. My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton illustrated the problems with the models that are proposed in the Budget to support small and medium-sized business. Business rates will be increasing as a consequence of the Budget, as will the small companies tax rate. There will be a fourfold increase in charges on businesses. In addition, as has been mentioned, the increase in tax on cider does not tackle the underlying problem of binge drinking, nor does it provide the support that is needed for responsible pubs up and down the country. The increase is like using a hammer to break a nut. It is not targeted, and once again, there is not enough discussion between the Treasury, the DCMS and the industry, and not enough understanding of how taxation can work to influence behaviour.
	To give another example, I met officials of the Tourism Alliance this week and a group representing caravan parks, which are a big part of the tourism industry. They told me that caravan parks are now required to have an alcohol licence in their flower shops, because some bunches of flowers come with a bottle of champagne, so that people can celebrate events. They need a liquor licence for that, which seems to be absolute madness-there is no sense at all. That needs looking at.
	On bingo and gaming duties, we have again seen a massive hammer coming down on the industry, which does not help seaside towns in any way. One hundred and ninety arcades around the country have closed in the last year alone thanks to the lack of support from the Government. They have tweaked the number of B3 gaming machines that are allowed, which has made arcades unprofitable, which is why so many are closing. Once they are closed, the boards go up, which has a ripple effect on the problems that seaside towns face.
	That brings me to the point of order that I made before the debate. I had the opportunity to grab the Minister outside the Chamber to ask him whether he was aware of the announcement made on Radio 4 today that the Government will give £5 million to support seaside towns. I have just checked, and there is still no more information on that in the Vote Office, yet the announcement was made on the radio. I plead to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister that surely, if we are going to respect this House and if we are going to be allowed to debate those matters properly, we need to share information with hon. Members so that we can understand what is happening. I have no idea where this £5 million is coming from. I have a suspicion that it is actually regurgitated money, as is often the case-an old announcement conveniently re-announced-but I simply do not know. DCMS is none the wiser, and the Treasury Minister did not know anything about it, which suggests that it is a regurgitated announcement.
	Furnished holiday lets are those homes that are given over to the tourism market to provide an alternative to staying in a hotel. If the tax breaks that have applied until now are removed in April, as the Government intend, 10 per cent. of the market could be lost, which would lead to the loss of 2,400 jobs and a potential reduction in tourism spend of more than £200 million. I do not think that the Treasury has looked at this carefully enough and I ask the Minister to reconsider it. We have made it clear that we are likely to shift the rules so that the occupancy rate will have to be 20 weeks a year, rather than 10. The Government are running scared of EU legislation, but I ask them to listen to the tourism industry, realise how important this issue is for people from Cornwall to Scotland and get the legislation sorted out.
	There are many aspects of Conservative policy on tourism that I would be happy for the Government to copy. Thankfully, a general election is coming up so we do not have to wait much longer. Only £37 of every £100 we spend on holidays is spent in the UK, which means that £63 is spent abroad. A little effort by this Government to promote Britain to encourage us to celebrate what we have here would shift that balance and more money would stay in the UK. Corporation tax should go down, not up, and business rate relief should be automatic, not accessed only after a lot of red tape. The Budget did not contain any new tax breaks for new companies, but we have promised that every new company with fewer than 10 employees will not have to pay national insurance for the first year. The Secretary of State asked for evidence of what the Tories would do, and that policy is a great example of how we would help SMEs get the support that they need.
	The Government also need to look at the issue of visas. I urge them to consider a Schengen-plus bind-on to allow those Oriental visitors who want to come here to do so. France and Germany have 500,000 visitors from China every year, but the UK only gets 100,000. That is because Chinese tourists look at the cost of the UK visa and the cost of the Schengen visa, and they turn their nose up at the British offer because it allows entry into just one country. Biometrics must have reached the point at which the two systems could work together and that would be a step towards helping the British tourism industry.
	The Chancellor spoke for more than an hour, after which we knew little more than we had done before. After three terms of this Government, we still do not know what they have actually done. We head towards the general election none the wiser about how Labour would cut spending in real terms, how small business would get more support or how the cuts of £24 billion would affect the public services. After a decade of Labour, we see that the boom was wasted. The Government have failed to carry out the radical reforms to public services that new Labour promised us back in 1997 with such fanfare. Those reforms promised to change lives, but our pension systems remain a mess and our health and education systems hardly reflect the doubling of the budgets that they have received.
	This Budget, days away from a general election, should have provided the economic argument for Labour's appeal for a fourth term. Instead, it shied away from the big questions. It postponed the big issues and attempted to hoodwink the British people into thinking that Labour has weathered the economic storm. It has exposed the absence of a plan or any vision for the future. Britain can do better, and thankfully the nation will decide whether this Government should have a fourth term. They may well ask what on earth was achieved in the last three terms.

David Gauke: Indeed? I am grateful for that information.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield's industry and independence have been well respected by his constituents and by hon. Members-and by those who fall into both categories-in his long career. I do not know whether he will be pleased to discover that he became a Member of Parliament eight days before I was born. He probably will not, but I congratulate him on his long and distinguished career none the less.
	I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) for his excellent speech, in which he highlighted his concerns about youth unemployment, the budget deficit, and the need for an office for budget responsibility. He also used a telling phrase when he described the Budget as a "mock Budget". My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) provided the House with a business perspective, and with details of how businesses such as Randall's of Uxbridge had suffered under Labour Governments through the generations. This Government have been no exception.
	I should also like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) for highlighting the Budget's attack on cider. He rightly said that, although the Government sometimes copy our policies, they frequently fail to get them quite right. This is just such an occasion, as they have raised the tax on all cider rather than targeting the super-strength ciders. That is most unfortunate and will cause great difficulty in his constituency-a fine constituency that I know well, and I know that you do, too, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker), who started with the statement, which has been widely denied, that when he first came to this place, he was not a nice person. I knew him when he arrived here, and would just like to say that he was a very nice person. He was perhaps a little chubbier than he is now, but he was certainly very nice.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), following the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield in being consistent in focusing on certain issues, highlighted over-regulation, immigration and Europe in his speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), who is a great advocate for the tourism industry, highlighted our party's policy on the difficulties with furnished holiday lettings. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) mentioned the fact that Labour Governments always leave the economy and the public finances in a mess.
	I also want to thank the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron), who spoke well about his constituency, and the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins), who, rather to everyone's surprise, praised Lord Mandelson. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen) revealed that he was a leading intellectual influence on Government policy and the return of Keynesianism. He also spoke of the need for greater transparency to prevent people from being ripped off. The hon. Member for Glasgow, North-East (Mr. Bain) spoke in his first Budget debate, and I suspect that it will not be his last.
	The task for the Budget was perhaps best set by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, in a speech in Exeter on 19 January when he said that the spring Budget provides an opportunity to
	"demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term".
	We can take it as implicit in that that the Government had not succeeded in demonstrating a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability prior to this Budget. The fact is that the Government have failed that task.
	It is not persuasive for the Government to say, "Look, we have lower borrowing than we predicted." After all, the Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted in its green budget in January that the borrowing could be reduced to £167 billion for this year, but it went on to state that, even with the same level of growth as the Government predicted, lower tax revenues would result, so much of the gains would be lost. The IFS also pointed out that the Treasury's forecasts for economic growth were higher than the average of independent forecasts; indeed, we know that they are even higher than the Bank of England projected. There is consequently very little room for optimism as far as growth is concerned.
	We have heard a lot about tax rises. Most noticeably, we heard about the increase in national insurance contributions. It was striking when, earlier this week, a policy exchange paper showed, by running through an economic model very similar to that of the Treasury, that an increase in employers' national insurance contributions of 2 per cent. would reduce gross domestic product by 2 per cent. and increase unemployment by 1 million. It was rightly said that the result should be viewed with caution and I am not saying that the figure is right. If it is, however, it is remarkable that the Treasury went ahead, especially if it had received such advice. The Treasury should come clean with the British people as to the advice it has received on this matter.
	We heard more about higher tax on alcohol, not least on cider, and we heard about a permanent increase on stamp duty. There is also the issue of freezing personal allowances, raised by a number of hon. Members, which will cost 30 million people at least £48 a year as a consequence of the retail prices index being much higher than the rate to which the personal allowance will be raised.
	The big question and the big missing element is the absence of spending plans-the absence of a comprehensive spending review that is long overdue. The Government's excuse, of course, is that there is uncertainty about what the debt and unemployment figures will be over the months ahead, yet somehow those uncertainties are magically removed once we are the other side of a general election. At that point, it is possible to set out spending plans going through to 2013-14.
	We are not given the numbers and, given what the IFS said earlier today, we know why. According to the IFS, spending on public services and administration will have to fall by a total of £48 billion in real terms by 2014-15 and in unprotected areas such as higher education, transport and housing, spending will have to be reduced by between 19.5 and 25.4 per cent. by 2014-15. If the Minister disputes those numbers, I urge him to take the opportunity to do so this afternoon.
	My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor provided us with some quotations from officials regarding spending plans. I am not going to repeat them-time does not allow me-but I can throw in some examples where both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Communities and Local Government seem to be making the same claims for the same efficiencies in exactly the same terms. It looks as if there is an element of double counting as well. It is worth quoting Cathy Newman, the Channel 4 journalist who compiled this list, when she described Departments as being
	"hilariously candid about just how back of the envelope their plans are".
	The truth is that the Government have a dreadful record on efficiency savings. They had their own target of £35 billion of savings to be found between April 2008 and April 2011, but confirmed yesterday that they had found only £10.8 billion. As the IFS pointed out today, some savings that have been found belong to existing efficiency drives and are therefore not additional, while some, because they are in protected areas, will be recycled and will not count towards deficit reduction. Savings must be about delivering. It is a question of having to show, not tell. That is one reason for saying that the sooner we get on with delivering these efficiency savings, the better.
	The fact is that this has been a thin, empty, dead-end Budget, lacking ideas and vision and giving no sense of how this Government will take the country forward. Perhaps, as we debate what Conservative Members hope will be the last Budget produced by Labour, this is a good time to look back at the first, delivered on 2 July 1997 by the then Chancellor, now Prime Minister. It is well worth reading some of the lines that appear in it:
	"Public finances must be sustainable over the long term. If they are not, the poor, the elderly and those on fixed incomes who depend on public services that will suffer most."

David Gauke: He was indeed. We are now borrowing more than we have borrowed at any time in our peacetime history.
	The then Chancellor went on to say:
	"A prudent estimate of the current trend rate of growth is only 21/4 per cent., so raising the long-term growth rate of our economy is our major challenge."
	The IFS green budget and the OECD estimate that the trend growth rate is now 13/4 per cent., so there is another failure.
	The then Chancellor also said that past Chancellors had
	"deluded themselves into believing that growth, however unbalanced, was evidence of their success. I will not ignore the warning signs and I will not repeat past mistakes",
	but oh yes he did. He also said that one of important elements of growth was business investment, but now, in 2010, we are seeing the largest fall in business investment since records began.
	The then Chancellor said:
	"Half the adult population of our country hardly saves at all."
	Under the current Government, saving rates have reached record lows. He also said:
	"I want the United Kingdom to be the obvious first choice for new investment, so I have decided to cut the main rate of corporation tax."
	He went on to boast about our tax competitiveness on the basis of the corporation tax rate. In 1997, our rate was lower than the OECD average; now it is higher. In 1997, ours was the 11th lowest rate in the world; now it is the 23rd lowest. In 1997 ours was the third lowest rate in the EU 15; now it is the sixth highest, and the Prime Minister is standing in the way of our proposals to reduce corporation tax further.
	The then Chancellor said that
	"it is time for the welfare state to put opportunity back into people's hands."
	He also focused on young people, saying:
	"There will be no fifth option-to stay at home on full benefit."-[ Official Report, 2 July 1997; Vol. 297, c. 303-308.]
	Now 923 young people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, and the figure is 50 per cent. higher than it was in 1997. The figure for economic inactivity is at a record high, at over 8 million.
	That was not a Budget that stood the test of time. It introduced fiscal rules that have been abandoned. It boasted of dismantling the internal market in the national health service, which had to be reintroduced. It proposed individual learning accounts, which had to be abandoned after being abused by fraudsters. It proposed a university for industry; that proposal led nowhere. Nevertheless, we could at least say that that was not an empty Budget. It was packed with ideas, although most of them were bad ideas. In contrast, yesterday's Budget showed that the Government have completely run out of ideas and run out of steam. I can, however, find one similarity between the hyperactive Chancellor and the fading Prime Minister who will go to the electorate very shortly. Both can be described in this way: fired with enthusiasm.
	This is a Government who are just trying to muddle through-a Government who have run out of steam, run out of ideas and run out of courage. With this Budget, they are ending with a whimper.

Ian Pearson: It is a pleasure to respond to today's Budget debate on behalf of the Government. I shall begin by responding to the speeches of Back-Bench Members, some of whom were making their last speech in the Chamber as they will be retiring at the forthcoming general election.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) made a powerful speech in which he talked about the importance of investment in schools in his community and in infrastructure. He has seen the great difference that has made, yet in the years before Labour came to power such investment just was not there and his area was forgotten about. He rightly pointed out that Building Schools for the Future is a programme for the future, and it will continue to provide much-needed investment in our schools infrastructure. He also spoke very eloquently about the changes he has seen in the coalfield communities in and around his constituency, and I particularly noted his points about Orgreave and the advanced manufacturing plant that is now located there.
	My right hon. Friend also made some valid points about the role of Government intervention both in his constituency and more generally, and I am disappointed that it appears that regional development agencies have become a political football. A rational and dispassionate analysis of the situation leads to the obvious conclusion that there are some things that can be done at the local level and others that need to be done at the Westminster and Whitehall level, but that there is also a gap, so there is a valid case for RDAs and the work they do. The Conservative party should have a serious think about its planning policy because it would put future economic growth in jeopardy by putting barriers in the way of the strategically important investments that the UK will need to make.
	I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton), who is retiring after almost 39 years in this House. As has been said, he began his parliamentary career before the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) was born-and the shadow Chancellor, too. I think I must have been a secondary school pupil when the hon. Member for Macclesfield first entered this House. As always, he spoke with great passion about manufacturing industry and I, as an MP for a west midlands seat, share that passion. I do not, however, share his concerns about international ownership of companies that are major employers in the United Kingdom. In modern-day manufacturing, companies, including some of our biggest companies, have a very diverse share base. The hon. Gentleman mentioned AstraZeneca, and it is a case in point. I am sure he will have welcomed the Chancellor's comments about not going back to the interventionism of the past, but no return to the hands-off approach of the free marketeers either. I believe an active industrial policy to support manufacturing is what is needed. That is not to say that we do not need to do more to improve the service sector, but it is inconceivable that the United Kingdom can have a strong future without a vibrant manufacturing base.
	I have always respected the views held by my hon. Friends the Members for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) and for Leyton and Wanstead (Harry Cohen), although I have found it very difficult to agree with them on most occasions. In fact, it is one of the ironies of this place that I have probably agreed more with Opposition Front-Bench Members than with them over the last 15 years that I have been a Member of this House. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North is absolutely right to point to the value of the new industrial activism that has been espoused by Lord Mandelson. A number of us have been arguing strongly for that for a long time. I am glad that it is now more recognised within government. My hon. Friend said that we ought to be following Germany's example more, but if he reads the detail of the Budget and what we are saying in response to the Hauser review, he will see that we are following the model of Fraunhofer's that has been introduced there. In fact, although our proposals on UK finance for growth and the green investment are not the same as this-one would not expect them to be-they share some similarities with the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, which Germany has had for many years.
	The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) is always worth listening to, but I still think he is on the wrong side of the argument on how we should tackle the deficit. We maintain strongly that making cuts now would put the recovery in danger, and we do not believe it is right to do that. However, he made some good points about the costs of employment, and it is right that any future Government should look at those and when the time is appropriate, and the economy can afford it, should look to reduce national insurance. The judgment we made in increasing national insurance from April 2011 was that we need to do that as part of our plans for fiscal consolidation, and we believe it is the fair thing to do. He also made important points about private equity. If he were to read page 53-I think that is the right page-of the Budget document, he would see that we wish to re-examine venture capital trusts and the eligibility limits for investments that are made. He also ought to welcome what we are doing through the growth capital fund and UK Finance for Growth too.
	The hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) talked with the great knowledge that comes from his background in business. Like him, I have a business background, so I understand why he feels so strongly about it. I agree with the points he made about the status of engineers. I dimly remember something from my education days about selective employment tax, to which he referred. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-East (Mr. Bain) paid full tribute to serving Members of this House. He may be a new Member, but he made a very mature contribution to his first Budget debate speech, and I know that that will augur well for his future.
	The hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) made a stout defence of the cider industry in his constituency, and it is right that he wishes to press for the interests of his constituents, whom he feels may be affected. If he looks at some of the fine detail that has been announced, he might obtain some greater assurances. He also talked about rural broadband, to which the Government are very much committed. We remain fully committed to the universal service commitment by 2012, and to the roll-out of next-generation broadband.
	The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) talked about the problems of his local further education college and the legacy of mismanagement by the Learning and Skills Council. I must say that that is one of the more horrifying examples of mismanagement that I have come across in my time as a Minister. Like him, and in contrast to the hon. Members for Stone (Mr. Cash) and for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), I am hugely positive about the future of this country. It is unusual for somebody in the position of the hon. Member for Broxbourne on the Conservative Benches to be talking the country up, but it is refreshing that he wants to do so. Perhaps the fact that he has not gone further towards the Opposition Front Bench is because he is too nice, not because he was too nasty-he claimed that he was-when he came into this place.
	The hon. Members for Stone and for Bournemouth, East both talked about levels of debt and the UK's credit rating. They will be very aware that all the credit rating agencies judge that the UK has the highest possible credit rating, and Moody's has said that we have a resilient triple A sovereign rating. Right across this House there must be common agreement that it is important that the UK takes every action it needs to maintain its sovereign triple A credit rating.
	The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East also talked passionately about tourism. I agree with many of the points he made about its importance, but I suspect that we disagree on some of the practical policy measures. However, tourism is an important sector for the UK economy, and it is right and proper that we should continue to stress its importance.
	The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) talked about sleight of hand in the Government's freezing of personal allowances. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, also said that this was a political Budget and that we would not have this sort of Budget if there were not a general election coming, but I do not think the Conservatives would be creating so much fuss about the indexation of personal allowances if it were not for the forthcoming general election. The idea that that is a stealth tax is completely disingenuous. Each year, personal allowances go up in line with inflation, and the uprating figure that is used is that for the previous September. As inflation was negative last September, at minus 1.4 per cent., those allowances could, in theory, have been cut, but we chose instead to freeze them, and we announced that in the pre-Budget report. In the past 12 years, personal allowances have been indexed in nine years, frozen in one year, when the personal allowance was used to help to pay for increases in health spending, and over-indexed in two years. If there were not a general election in the offing, the Conservative party would not be making anything whatever of this issue, because it is simply the normal thing to do.

Chris Mullin: As you will know, Mr Speaker, it is the custom when we come to this place for a new Member to make a maiden speech. With your indulgence, I wonder if I might initiate a new genre tonight: the valedictory speech.
	I have been in this place 23 years. I hope that, during that time, I have left the occasional footprint in the sand, but I am under no illusion. Only a handful of those of us who currently strut these corridors will still be remembered in 10 or 20 years' time and I do not expect to be among them. Before the waters close over my head, however, I would like to take this opportunity to place on record a few random thoughts that might be of interest to those who come afterwards.
	To those who ask where I am coming from, I reply that I am a socialist with a small s, a liberal with a small l, a green with a small g and a Democrat with a capital D. Although most of us are more prosperous than we have ever been, we live in an age of disillusion and corrosive cynicism. It is fashionable to believe that all politicians are useless, that nothing works, that everything is bad and getting worse and that all political activity is pointless. I do not accept this.
	Despite the catastrophe of Iraq, I sincerely believe that the achievements of the last three Labour Governments have been considerable. I have only to look at my own constituency to see the truth of that proposition. With hand on heart I can say with confidence that during these last 13 years the lives and life chances of many of my least prosperous constituents have been immeasurably improved. The Government have, for reasons I can only guess at, been rather shy about it, but we have redistributed some wealth. The minimum wage, working tax credits, pension credits and the huge investment in health, education and public transport have made a considerable impact and I defy anyone to argue otherwise. In my constituency in 1997, and one has to pinch oneself to recall this, a significant number of people-security guards, mail-order workers and care workers-were earning as little as £1 an hour. The waiting time for a hip operation at Sunderland Royal hospital was up to two years and it is now 18 weeks and falling.
	There is a secondary school in my constituency, Sandhill View, at which 15 years ago less than 10 per cent.-I repeat, less than 10 per cent.-of GCSE pupils were achieving five A to C grades. Today, Sandhill View is under dynamic new management. It has been entirely rebuilt, sharing a library, sports and other facilities with the surrounding community. It covers exactly the same catchment area as the old school, and around 60 per cent. of pupils obtain five A to C grades. To be sure, there is still room for progress, but I think that the House will agree that there has been a dramatic improvement on what went before.
	Nor do I believe that such changes are confined only to Sunderland. City centres such as those in Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, once in near terminal decline, have been reborn. No doubt there are many reasons why this has happened, but I do believe that it has something to do with the fact that we have enjoyed more than a decade of Labour Government.
	There has been progress, too, in other important areas, such as the environment, criminal justice, and international development, and above all in Ireland, where peace has been achieved after many years of apparently intractable conflict. And who would have thought that we would live to see the day when a new Labour Government took a controlling interest in three major banks with-eventually-Conservative support?
	There are social and constitutional reforms that were controversial in their day but which, having been enacted, will endure for ever. They include the bans on smoking in public places and on cigarette advertising, the requirement that political parties disclose their source of funding, and the Freedom of Information Act-painful though that has proved for us humble servants of the people. Whatever the outcome of the election, no one can take those achievements away from the Governments of the last 13 years, and I note that no Opposition party is intending to do so.
	I would like now to address the future. Whatever the achievements of the past, we are all well aware that we are as far away as ever from achieving nirvana. Although in some respects my political views have modified over the years, I continue to doubt that there is a long-term future for an economy based on shopping. The frenetic consumerism of recent decades surely contains the seeds of its own destruction, and even more so now that China and India are falling over themselves to make, with knobs on, the same mistakes as we have made.
	I truly believe that this age of consumerism is only a very temporary period in the history of the human race and that, if we carry on as we are, it will end badly-perhaps within the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren. As things stand, we are using up the resources of the planet as though there is no tomorrow and, if we are not careful, there will be no tomorrow.
	One way or another, we have to devise lifestyles that are sustainable, and that may well require changes to our way of life that most people have only dimly begun to contemplate. This I regard as the greatest single challenge facing the new generation of political leaders, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they come from.
	I think that we can all agree too that the neo-liberal experiment of the last two decades, which has bewitched politicians on all sides of the House and both sides of the Atlantic, is well and truly over. The near meltdown of the global banking system was a wake-up call, if ever there was one.
	Not everyone has got the message, however. Three months ago, at the annual dinner of the Institute of Directors-I get some invited to some very odd places these days-I was interested to hear the man in charge still chanting the mantra of light-touch regulation and demanding less Government intervention in the workings of the market. I thought to myself, "Lucky there was some big Government around when the banks went belly up."
	Nor should we imagine, as we sit tight in fortress Europe watching other people's catastrophes on our television screens-and perhaps averting our eyes by switching channels-that we will remain indefinitely immune.
	The world is increasingly a village. What happens in one part has consequences in another. The danger for western Europe is that, if the world beyond our frontiers is allowed to disintegrate-as the oceans rise, the rivers evaporate, the deserts expand and populations multiply-the flow of economic refugees from Africa and Asia will gradually become a tide that will gradually overwhelm our fragile social, economic and political systems.
	I do not say that that will happen, but it must be a possibility that can no longer be overlooked. We are deluding ourselves if we imagine that this process can be halted by increased repression. In the end, it can be reversed only by addressing the root causes, and that requires political leaders of courage and vision, willing to face their electorates with home truths and not merely pandering to the basest prejudices.
	Here in the United Kingdom, our problems are exacerbated by the fact that for a generation or more, our citizens have been encouraged to believe that they can enjoy European standards of public services and American levels of taxation. Sooner or later, choices must be made. Perhaps the moment has come. If we want higher standards in our schools, better hospitals, better pension provision, and long-term care for the elderly, they will have to be paid for out of taxation. Let us not pretend, as some do, that such benefits can be paid for merely by taxing the rich; they cannot. We, the pampered inhabitants of middle England, will have to make a larger contribution. By all means crack down on waste and demand value for money, but do not pretend that that alone will solve the problem. At the end of the day, there are choices to be made, and each choice has consequences that we must face maturely. I keep reading how heavily taxed we are, but I note that the basic rate of income tax today is well below what it was in Mrs. Thatcher's day.
	Government needs to become a little less frenetic. The practice of annual reshuffles is massively destabilising and confers enormous power on the civil service. There have been eight Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions in the 10 years since that Department was invented. Of late, we have been getting through Home Secretaries at the rate of one a year. Goodness knows how many Health and Education Ministers we have got through. We are on our 10th Europe Minister.

Chris Mullin: I defer to my right hon. Friend. We are on our ninth or 10th Prisons Minister. I was the sixth Africa Minister and the current incumbent is the ninth. That does not make for good government.
	I turn briefly to our 24-hour media. The free flow of information is the lifeblood of democracy, but I do wonder if we politicians have not gone too far in trying to ride the tiger. Perhaps future Prime Ministers should spend a little less time feeding, appeasing, and canoodling with tabloid editors and their proprietors; in any case, it almost always ends in tears.
	I refer to another issue that ought to be of concern to all those of us who care about the condition of our democracy: the funding of politics. We have come some way in recent years in regulating party funding, but it remains an unhappy fact that all the main parties are, to a greater or lesser extent, dependent on the favours of rich men. I believe that this demeans our politics, and it is time that it was addressed. The dilemma that we face is that we live at a time when the public are less inclined to join political parties, do not wish to donate and, above all, do not want their taxes to fund political parties. But-and here is the rub-they all wish to live in a democracy. That is the circle that we poor, despised, inadequate politicians have to try to square. There are no easy solutions, but the one that I favour is for every taxpayer to be given a tax-free allowance of up to, say, £250, which he or she is entitled to donate to the political party of their choice in return for a strict cap on individual donations.
	In passing, may I say a word about what I regard as one of the most insidious developments in recent years-the growth of outsourcing or agency work? Increasingly, there are two classes of people working alongside each other in this country. There are those fortunate enough to be employed on a contract, as we are. They are in full-time work, and are entitled to paid holidays, occupational pensions, sickness pay, redundancy pay and all the other hard-won benefits that we used quaintly to associate with the 20th century. Alongside them, there is a class of people who qualify for none of those things, who can be put down and picked up at will, and who are often paid less than others doing the same work.
	Regrettably, the practice of outsourcing is spreading. The outsourced are all around us. There is a school of thought that believes that to be desirable. I regard it as a most ominous development, storing up great problems for the future. We talk of lifting families out of poverty, but outsourcing drives people into poverty. We are heading remorselessly back towards the 19th century, back to the days of casual work, when workers assembled at the shipyard gate, and the foreman said, "I'll have you, you and you, and the rest of you can go home." I hope that future Governments will consider long and hard before pushing more people down that road in the name of the great god efficiency. At the very least, if the practice cannot be reversed, it needs to be carefully regulated.
	Finally, a word to the coming generation of politicians. I have one simple message: take Parliament seriously. If we, the elected, do not, why should anybody else? By all means one should support the programme on which one's party was elected, but we are not automatons. We are not sent here merely to be cheerleaders, or to get stiff necks looking up at the fount of power. We are here to exercise our judgment-to hold Ministers to account for the powers they hold. And that means proper scrutiny. It means insisting that Ministers engage seriously with Parliament, and that they are open to dialogue. It means, so far as possible, insisting that the Government publish legislation in draft so that it might be improved before it is set in stone. And, if you want an easy win, Mr. Speaker, so far as the public are concerned, it means doing away with the 80-day summer recess.
	In conclusion, there are many people whom I must thank: the people of the Sunderland, South constituency for having allowed me to represent them these last 23 years; members of the Sunderland South Labour party for having allowed me to be their candidate through five general elections; friends and colleagues from all parts of the House for the pleasure of their company; officials great and small with whom I have worked over the years, both in government and in the House; and last but not least, yourself, Mr. Speaker, for doing me the honour of presiding tonight, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House and her distinguished shadow, the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young), both respected colleagues over many years, for their presence.
	Mr. Speaker, I depart with mixed feelings. I have heard it said that most MPs stay one Parliament too long, and I thought it better to go while people are still asking "Why?" rather than "When?" There will be withdrawal symptoms. Leaving now is either the best thing I have ever done or the biggest mistake of my life. At this point, I have no idea which. I do know this, however: I count it a privilege to have been born in a democracy and to have served in this place. The great thing about democracy is that, although harsh things are sometimes said, we are not actually trying to kill each other. Differences are ultimately resolved at the ballot box. One side wins; one side loses; and the loser lives to fight another day. Mr. Speaker, those are the last words that I shall speak in this place.